Iraqi union leader murdered. “Resistance” targets trade unions, women, lesbians and gay men

Submitted by Anon on 12 January, 2005 - 5:59

While the Islamists and former regime members continue to mainly target foreign troops and Iraqi state officials in the run-up to the Iraqi elections, the comprehensively anti-working class nature of the so-called resistance is revealed by a continuing series of attacks on trade union organisations and union members.

On Tuesday 4 January Hadi Salih (pictured), the international secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions was shot dead, according to reports, by ex-Ba’thist assassins. This is the most serious of a number of reported attacks on the members of the CP-aligned federation. Attacks have also taken place on the railway line between Basra and Nasiriyyah and on union offices in Baghdad. All these attacks should to be condemned by socialists and labour movement activists.

The IFTU states, “In the first incident, on December 25, a freight train travelling from Basra to An-Nasiriyyah was attacked. Two train drivers were kidnapped and the other five workers on the train were severely beaten and left in a life-threatening condition.”

The IFTU has also reported that the Transport and Communication Workers Union headquarters was badly damaged in a rocket-propelled grenade and mortar attack on the night of December 26-27.

In addition there have been two attempts on the life of Nuzad Ismael, president of the IFTU in the Kirkuk region.

The UN reports that leaflets distributed near Fallujah offer money to anyone giving information on journalists, translators and drivers working with foreign companies or newspapers.

The Islamists’ anger against many of the progressive manifestations of modern living is highlighted in a statement from the Union of the Unemployed: “[The Iraqi “resistance”] pursues extremely reactionary objectives, it offers a very reactionary alternative to the current bourgeois authority and uses very reactionary methods to realise its objectives.

“The alternative offered by this ‘resistance’ was made obvious in Fallujah and other parts of Iraq controlled by them for short periods of time. Not only is this ‘resistance’ unconcerned with the wellbeing, prosperity and daily needs of the people like electricity and water supply, health services etc., but also it deprives people of the most basic pleasures of modern life, like enjoying music, dance, modern clothes, alcohol, modern hair styles and so on. It attempts to impose the most backward and reactionary values, traditions and way of living on people.”

Three Islamist groups have issued statements saying that one of the reasons they wish to disrupt Iraq’s elections is to prevent Iraq “becoming homosexual”.

And the wave of Islamist-led violence against women continues.

During Ramadan Hinadi, a dancer in the group el-Portoqala, was murdered by Islamists in Basra. Islamists claimed the group’s songs were pornographic, liberal and “alien to conservative Iraqi society”. In reality the songs merely showed women dancing. Many Islamic groups issued death threats against all members of this group. The remaining members have left Iraq and now live in the UAE.

Houzan Mahmoud from the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq writes, “A fascist Islamic group called Mujahideen Shura Group has warned that it will kill any women who are seen on the street unveiled… In the northern city of Mosul, Christian women are targets of a killing, kidnapping and rape campaign. One such barbaric crime took place in this city where two women were kidnapped and raped by a number of men and then were sold as female slaves. They were again raped repeatedly for four days before they managed to escape…

“In the city of Fallujah, at the Mujahideen congress held on 20 October 2004, the Islamic criminal Abdulla al-Janabi and Falluja’s Shura Council gave a fatwa (religious decree) that Mujahideen fighters should rape girls at age 10 before they are raped by Americans!”

The UUI: “[Under Islamist rule in parts of Iraq] women in particular are forced to live in conditions worse in many aspects than conditions under the ex-Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Moreover, groups in this “resistance” use the most violent and inhumane methods to impose their will and achieve their objectives.

“These methods include suicide bombers, car bombs which kill indiscriminately, assassinations, beheadings, torture, kidnapping, destroying people, property, attacking public services, issuing fatwas and death threats against anyone who disagrees with them and does not observe their way of living.”

• More: www.workersliberty.org/iraq

By Mark Osborn

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