When? Wednesday May 25th and Thursday May 26th
Where? The Meeting Room, Basra Institute of Petroleum
What time? 10.30am - 5.30pm
*Press Conference and Photocall/Interview opportunities - Thursday May
26th, 5pm, The Meeting Room, Basra Institute of Petroleum*
May 25-26 will see Iraqi trade unionists and civil society activists
gather at the Oil Institute of Basra for a two-day conference
aimed at fighting the privatisation of Iraqi oil.
The organisers of the conference, the General Union of Oil Employees, is
a union resolutely opposed to the Occupation, the former regime and
current plans to privatise Iraq's oil industry. UK-based campaiging
organisation Iraq Occupation Focus has organised the international
solidarity side of the conference.
Six papers written by six professors from Basra University on the
subject of privatisation will be presented and discussed, international
contributions and a tour of oil sector workplaces will also take place.
Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis have dedicated their film 'The Take' to the
conference. It will be the Arabic langauge and Iraq premiere of a film
dedicated to the courage, militancy, co-operation and autonomy of a
group of workers, not unlike those currently feeling the might of the
neo-con free market dictate in Iraq.
The film documents the take-over of an auto-parts factory in Buenos
Aries by unemployed workers. Naomi and Avi, as well as the workers
featured in the film, currently in translation by Indymedia Beirut, will
also send a message of solidarity to the conference, to show and inspire
that resistance to privatisation and the neo-con, neo-liberal agenda is
possible through workers' self-organisation.
Renowned writer and investigative journalist Linda McQuaig,
author of ground-breaking 'It's the Crude Dude: War, Big Oil and the
Fight for the Planet' has sent an adapted extract from her book.
Focus on the Global South has dedicated 20 copies of research document
"Silent War: The Economic and Ideological Occupation of Iraq".
http://www.focusweb.org/pdf/Iraq_Dossier.pdf
US Labour Against the War (USA), Platform (UK-based social and
environmental justice researchers and oil industry experts),
Jubilee Iraq (Iraq and UK) and War on Want (UK) have all crafted
research reports and messages of solidarity on the nature and history of
privatisation, production sharing agreements, the operations and
ideologies behind instiutitions like the IMF, WTO and WB plus the
dynamics of the international debt racket.
Messages of solidarity sent so far have come from: the South Africa
Anti-Privatisation Forum, Liga Manggawaga (Philippenes), the Candian
Autoworkers Union, Fiom-Cgil (Italy), and National Union of Journalists,
the Offshore International Liaison Committee, and The Stop the War
Coalition (UK).
Six oil workers from Patagonia, Argentina, fresh out of serving an eight
month prison sentence for occupying a British Petroleum oil plant last
year also sent a solidarity statement. It is included at the end of this
release.
Further details of participants and submissions tba. Contributions from
Venezuela, Colombia, Poland, Sweden, France and Lebanon expected.
For further information please contact:
Iraq Contacts
Farouk Isma'al, acting international secretary GUOE
0096440 319 310 ex 45 farouk101small@yahoo.com
Hassan Jumaa Awad Al Assadi, President GUOE (Arabic only) 00964 7801 001
196 hssnawad@yahoo.com
Ewa Jasiewicz, UK Contact for the General Union of Oil Employees, Iraq
Occupation Focus
freelance@mailworks.org
0044 7749 421 576
or Munir Chalabi, UK Contact for the General Union of Oil Employees,
Iraq Occupation Focus
0044 7952 683 415
munir@chalabi.screaming.net
NOTES
The GUOE was established a month after the invasion of Iraq.
Its has 23,000 members in Basra, Amara and Nassiriyah.
The Leadership has a history of opposition to and imprisonment by the
Baath regime.
The Union does not belong to any trade union federation in Iraq. It is
not organised through or controlled by any political party in Iraq. It
is an independent trade union.
The Union has already carried out strike action which has shut down oil
exports in 2003 and 2004.
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