January 27, 2006
The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), requests your urgent intervention in the following situation in Iraq.
Description of the situation:
The Observatory has been informed by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) of the murder of Mr. Alaa Issa Khalaf, a member of the Executive Board of the Baghdad branch of the Mechanics Union, and a prominent member of the recently created General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW).
According to the information received, Mr. Alaa Issa Khalaf was shot dead at around 7.30 am on January 25 by several unidentified men as he left for work from his home in Baghdad.
The Observatory recalls that it is not the first time that a trade unionist was murdered or abducted in Iraq. For instance, on February 18, 2005, the Iraqi labour leader Mr. Ali Hassan Abd (Abu Fahad), a prominent and outspoken member of the Oil and Gas Union, was murdered on his way home. Mr. Ali Hassan Abd was one of the first activists to organise trade unions in the oil industry, encouraging union voice in a post-Saddam Iraq as early as April 2003. Likewise, on January 4, 2005, Mr. Hadi Saleh, International Secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), was brutally tortured and murdered at his Baghdad home (See Observatory urgent appeal IRQ 001/0205/OBS 016, dated February 28, 2005).
The Observatory is very concerned that murder of labour leaders in Iraq has become a troubling trend in a country where trade unionists still operate under anti-union legislation which dates back to the Saddam-era, and urges the Iraqi authorities to immediately ratify the Convention 87 on freedom of association
Posted at January 28, 2006 12:07 PM