Hadi Salih, International Officer of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, was a courageous union activist. His assassination in Baghdad yesterday is a crime against Iraq's working people and its labor movement. The cowardly manner of his killing is intended to send a message to Iraq's workers and trade unionists - that their efforts to participate in any peaceful process of political change will be met with death. We stand in solidarity with the IFTU in rejecting this brutal intimidation.
Hadi Salih was killed because of his commitment and dedication to making Iraq a democratic and progressive country, building a society in which its people can lead safe and secure lives, with full employment at a decent standard of living. US Labor Against the War shares his vision of a peaceful and progressive Iraq, and sends its condolences to his family and fellow workers.
The ultimate source of violence in Iraq is the US occupation. The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions calls for the end of the occupation and the US war. Salih's murder does not bring this end one step closer. Instead, it seeks to terrorize Iraq's labor movement, and other parts of its civil society, to keep them from seeking any peaceful means of gaining political power in the interest of its working people.
In the past three months, IFTU members and rank-and-file workers have been murdered and kidnapped as they tried to carry out normal union activity, or simply do their jobs. On November 3, four railroad workers were killed, and their bodies mutilated. On December 25, two other train drivers were kidnapped, and five other workers beaten. On the night of December 26, the building of the Transport and Communications Workers in central Baghdad was shelled. Together with the assassination of Hadi Salih, these horrifying crimes are making Iraq as dangerous a place for union activists as Colombia.
The murderers of Hadi Salih and other Iraqi workers and unionists must be brought to justice. Iraq must become a safe and secure society in which people can exercise their rights as workers and unionists without fearing death and terror. The rights and security of Iraqi unionists are must be ensured and respected. This must include the full right to belong to a union and bargain with employers, the dismantling of the old Saddam-era laws banning unions in the public sector, and an end to the attempt to privatize Iraq's workplaces in the interests of transnational corporations.
The occupation must end, and the security of Iraq's unions and workers guaranteed. Bring the troops home now!
Hadi Salih, presente!
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Hadi Salih, International Secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions
Assassinated December 4, 2005
Brother Hadi Salih was a 56-year-old former printing worker, a founding member when the IFTU was formed in May last year. He had been sentenced to death in 1969 for his labour activism. After five years in jail, Mr Salih escaped the gallows when his sentence was commuted. He became a political refugee in Sweden but rushed back to Baghdad shortly after the war began in a bid to rekindle the labour movement.
"The biggest struggle at this time is to educate members and leaders on real, democratic work and the nature of trade unions," he said at the 18th World Congress of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), held in Japan December 6, 2004. "We are definitely interested in global support for labour education and training of members and leaders because real trade union work was absent in Iraq for the past 35 years."
"War does not serve the people of Iraq. Occupation doesn't help democracy," Salih said. Salih voiced optimism that the labour movement in Iraq could play a role as it did in Japan, where trade unions were key in the country's stunning economic comeback after the devastation of war. "The labour movement in Japan has been fighting for the future of Japan ever since the end of World War II, and they are living this future today and tomorrow," he said. "If they can do it, we can too," he said. "There is no reason why we can't fight for the future of Iraq. That's why I am enthusiastic."
Salih told a trade union meeting in England on January 22, “We need new progressive laws that recognise and guarantee workers’ rights and trade unions need to be involved in the formulation of any new labour laws.”
More information will be posted as it becomes available.
Posted at January 6, 2005 09:14 PM