1/4/05 Iraqi Trade Union Leader Murdered

PRESS BLACKOUT ON IRAQI TRADE UNION LEADER'S MURDER
By Doug Ireland, ILCA Associate Member

Iraqi trade union leader Hadi Salih, International Secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, was tortured and killed in his home in Baghdad Tuesday night--but a Nexis search reveals not a word has yet appeared in the U.S. Press.

"According to a report today from the IFTU, Salih was severely tortured before being put to death. Evidence of torture was visible on his head and body. His hands and legs had been tied. He was blindfolded, then strangled with electrical wire. Iraqi trade union sources believe that the atrocity was carried out by remnants of Saddam Hussein’s secret police, the Mukharabat," said the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in a statement.

On a visit to Europe last year, Salih "outlined the problems facing Iraqi trade unionists including lack of funds, the continued implementation of anti-union laws brought in by the Ba’athist dictatorship and attacks from US forces on IFTU offices."

U.S. Labor Against War issued a statement on Salih's murder which said in part: "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."

"Salih's murder underscores the indifference of the U.S. and its puppet government to the fate of trade unionists in Iraq who are trying to organize workers and collectively bargain for their rights. 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."

The Allawi government is largely hostile to trade unionists of what ever stripe--and so is the U.S. occupying force. As David Bacon of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union reported to a December conference of the International Labor Communications Association on receiving an award for an article, originally published in his union's newspaper, about his fact-finding trip to Iraq: "We assumed that if workers in the US could look at Iraq and see workers and human beings, they could understand better the economic purpose of occupation. They could see it is intended to implement privatization and the administration's neoliberal agenda. That's something many workers in the US already know about and understand. Seeing the occupation in that light, they could understand better why it was in our mutual interest, as Iraqis and Americans, to oppose the war."

More information is available at the excellent, British-based, international trade union news service Labourstart, which provides regular updates and alerts on labor struggles around the globe.

For more labor news around the world, see:
http://www.labourstart.org/

Linked to Labourstart, from: http://occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=8693
USLAW Condemns the Murder of
Hadi Salih

U.S. Labor Against War (USLAW)
January 5th, 2005


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 - he was shot in his bed - 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.