Read this article in:
7 August, 2006
“Hadi Never Died: Hadi Saleh and the Iraqi Trade Union Movement” is a recommended book just released about the continuing fight to establish free and democratic trade unions in Iraq. Written by Abdullah Muhsin and Alan Johnson, and published by UK’s Trades Union Congress, all proceeds of the book benefit Iraqi trade unions.
Hadi Saleh might best exemplify the decades-long fight for open and free trade unions inside Iraq. The country was once moderately tolerant of such unions, which made it an economic and social model for the Middle East. Hadi Saleh, then a leader in the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), was strangled to death with electrical wire in his home after being tortured on 4 January 2005 by assassins aligned with the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein. He was 58.
In 1969, Hadi Saleh was sentenced to death during the early years of a repressive regime for engaging in activities for free and independent trade unions. He was imprisoned for five years and then fled, taking exile in Sweden. At the height of the invasion in spring 2003 which toppled Saddam Hussein, he returned to Iraq to continue the fight for legitimate trade unions.
At the time of his death, he was the International Secretary of the IFTU, now called the Iraqi Workers’ Federation (IWF).
Hadi Saleh has not been the only trade union advocate since commencement of the Iraqi occupation to meet his death for trade union activity. In 18 February 2005, Ali Hassan Abd of the Oil & Gas Workers’ Union was shot and killed while walking home with his children. Less that a week later, Ahmed Adris Abas of the Transport & Communications Workers’ Union was gunned down in Martyrs’ Square in Baghdad.
On 25 January 2006, Alaa Issa Khalaf of the Mechanics’’ trade union of the General federation of Iraqi Workers was assassinated and in late April of this year, Thabet Hussein of the General Union for Health Sector Workers was murdered. In June, Shukry Al Shakhly, a founder of the IFTU, was also murdered.
Others have been kidnapped, or have been victims of senseless killings that occur every day now in Iraq.
Author and IWF liaison Abdullah Muhsin voiced the beliefs of Hadi Saleh at the recent launch of the book: “Free and independent unions will play an important role in making sure investment provides quality jobs and decent public services.
“But unions are also important in forming Iraq’s democratic future and national identity,” he added. “Our independence makes us a home to all Iraqis irrespective of gender, ethnicity, and religion. Unions are an antidote to the sectarian poisons of extremism in Iraq.”
“Hadi Never Died: Hadi Saleh and the Iraqi Trade Union Movement” can be ordered for ₤10 at http://www.tuc.org.uk/publications, or by e-mailing [email protected], or calling +44 20 7467 1294.