Iraqi Leader To George Bush: "Leave Our Country Alone!"

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International Labor Communications Association
AFL-CIO
June 24, 2005

Iraqi Labor Leaders Call for Solidarity, An End to U.S. Occupation
By Paul Burton

Several hundred people gathered at a public forum in Berkeley, California, June 19 to hear Iraqi union leaders talk about conditions in their country. Hassan Juma’a Awad Al Asade, President, and Faleh Abbood Umara, General Secretary, of the General Union of Oil Employees (GUOE) in Basra, talked about what the occupation has meant for Iraq’s working people and labor movement and how workers have successfully resisted privatization of Iraqi workplaces.

The two leaders were escorted into St. Joseph the Worker Church by the ILWU Honor Guard to a huge ovation from the activists, union members, and community leaders in attendance. Their talk in Berkeley was part of a national tour sponsored by U.S. Labor Against War.

The GUOE’s Hassan Juma’a Awad, speaking through a translator, called for support from the U.S. labor movement in ending the occupation. "I say straight to President Bush: ‘Leave our country alone!’" "Iraqi workers are challenging America," he said. "The proof is that only 11 days after the invasion in 2003 we began to re-organize our oil workers union."

The GOUE’s general secretary, Faleh Abbood Umara, described efforts of the union to negotiate with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) and the extreme dangers faced by union organizers and workers while traveling to work. Umara had also been detained by the Hussein regime in 1998 for activities on behalf of his co-workers at the Southern Oil Company in Basra, where he worked for 28 years.
"We will not give up," he said. "We ask you to help us pressure your administration to remove its forces in Iraq so we can rebuild our country."


http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2379&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

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