The President of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), Raseen Alawadi addressed a fringe meeting of British trade unionists on Wednesday 14 September on the most recent dramatic developments on the situation for trade unionists in Iraq. The meeting was sponsored by UNISON, Britain's largest union and chaired by Sue Rogers, Treasurer of teachers' union NASUWT and Chair of the British TUC's Iraq Solidarity Committee. UNISON Deputy General Secretary, Keith Sonnet who has recently returned from a trade union delegation to Iraqi Kurdistan also addressed the meeting.
Raseen Alawadi joined the Construction and Woodworkers' Union in 1957 and by 1959 had already been arrested for trade union activities. By 1968 he had become International Secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) and also during this period became Vice President of the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions (ICATU).
In 1979 he was arrested in a purge by the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein that included the murder of GFTU President Mohamed Ayish. Raseen and others accused of plotting against the Iraqi dictator were imprisoned but escaped from Iraq in 1991, returning in April 2003 after the fall of Saddam's regime to establish the IFTU.
Raseen reminded the British trade unionists that Iraq's people continued to bleed from wounds inflicted by terrorism. Earlier that same day the TUC President, Jeannie Drake had informed delegates of the terrible news of yet another car bomb in Baghdad, deliberately targetted at Iraqi workers queuing outside an employment agency for desperately needed jobs. This horror followed the great tragedy a few weeks previously that saw a terrorist-inspired panic lead to the deaths of more than a thousand people in the stampede on Al Khadamiya bridge.
Such terror attacks fall on trade unionists on a regular basis, Raseen said: "When we go to our offices in the morning, we don't know whether we will be coming home again." Yet, Raseen insisted that despite the existence of these fundamentalists who attack working class people in their homes and workplaces and in the street, the IFTU remains optimistic. The foreign intervention feeds such extremism and that is why the IFTU reiterates its position of calling for an end to the occupation of Iraq by foreign armies.
On the furious debate that is taking place in Iraq over the new draft constitution, Raseen said; "In general we support the need for the new constitution, although we have great reservations about the current draft being proposed to the Iraqi parliament."
The IFTU's reservations are firstly the references to Islam and religion as the source of the law under the constitution, secondly the draft constitution's relegation of the position of women, thirdly the crude references to de-Ba'athification, which fail to distinguish between the bloody criminals of Saddam's regime and the many thousands of ordinary Iraqi people who may have joined Saddam's Ba'ath Party because of fear, or to protect a relative, or in order to access higher education or employment. Fourthly, the IFTU supports the principle of federalism in the draft Constitution, but opposes the sectarian way that this is being used by Islamists in the south to divide Iraq.
Raseen said: "We are working for national unity on the basis of equality under the law. We have worked for over two years now for the creation of one united, democratic trade union movement in Iraq and we have now achieved this goal with the joint statements that were signed between the IFTU, the GFTU and the General Federation of Iraqi Trade Unions" (GFITU - a fraction of the former state-run GFTU that split off following the fall of Saddam Hussein, in an attempt to gain political patronage from the Islamic political parties al-Dawa and SCIRI).
As a result of the detailed discussions that have taken place in the last few months between these three organisations, three joint statements have been issued calling for unity and there will be a further meeting in Damascus on Monday 19 September at the offices of the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions, to formally recognise and adopt the merged federation, which will be known as the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions.
"The current government of Prime Minister, Al-Jaafari, has issued the notorious Decree 875 to try to prevent this united, democratic national trade union centre emerging in Iraq and we will not let him succeed", Raseen said.
Since the foreign forces invaded Iraq and occupied it, the IFTU has repeatedly called for the withdrawal of all foreign forces and the ending of the interference in Iraq's affairs by foreign governments such as that of Iran and certain Arab countries.
"The IFTU did not legitimise the occupation of Iraq, it was legitimise by the United Nations under Resolution 1483. Now it is time for the international labour movement to call clearly for Iraq's sovereignty to be returned and to assist democrats in Iraq to resist the attempts to breach women's rights and trade unionists' rights", Raseen concluded.
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