Commemoration for Yanar Mohammed

On 29 March, a wide range of the Iraqi, Kurdish, and Iranian left gathered in Greenwich, south-east London, to pay tribute to Yanar Mohammed, a leading Iraqi feminist and member of the Organisation of the Communist Alternative in Iraq (OCAI), murdered by Islamists in Baghdad on 2 March 2026. Nico Dessaux, a French activist who worked with Yanar’s organisations, a comrade from the Frontline Socialist Party of Sri Lanka, John Moloney, assistant general secretary of PCS, but in a personal capacity, and Martin Thomas from Workers’ Liberty, also spoke. Sadly, no other British left group came.

Speech at the commemoration from Martin Thomas of Workers' Liberty

Looking back over the activities we as Workers' Liberty have done with Yanar, with OWFI, and with Worker-Communist comrades, over almost 25 years, I am proud and I am ashamed.

I am proud that we have been a voice for international working-class solidarity, against the capitalists but also against the Stalinists and the Islamists.

I am ashamed that we have not been numerous enough or energetic enough to help Yanar and the working class of Iraq defeat their enemies and win safety for Yanar, but also for the workers and the women of Iraq generally.

For example, I remember the National Union of Students conference, then a big event, in Britain in 2005. We campaigned to have Yanar elected Honorary Vice-President of NUS. That would have been a small victory, but it would have been a victory.

We were voted down, by the Islamic Student Societies and also by much of the left. We got Houzan Mahmoud, a comrade of Yanar's, in to speak, but the Islamic Student Societies and much of the left refused even to hear her, and walked out of the conference.

That is another way of saying that we were not numerous enough or energetic enough to win then.

I interviewed Yanar for our paper Solidarity in June 2005, and she told us that she had had death threats and was in hiding for a while.

She had the courage and the energy to continue active for 21 years after that, although she knew the threats had not gone away.

The only real way to pay tribute to her is to develop more courage and energy ourselves.

Our movement, the Trotskyist movement, has been built for decades on those who found the courage and energy to continue active despite threats and despite the Nazis, and even more so the Stalinists, killing tens of thousands of our comrades in Russia, in Vietnam, in Greece, in France, and other countries.

It hasn't all been just holding on against the stream. We have won some victories. Today in Britain, more often we need the political courage to defy indifference or derision around us, than physical courage to defy death threats.

But even that political courage does not come without an effort. We need that effort to be a voice within the labour movement for the working-class Third Camp, against US imperialism but also against Russian imperialism and Iranian regional imperialism.

We can pay tribute by working so that next year, or the year after, we are still proud, but also less ashamed.