Since 2003, dozens of union activists in Iraq have been kidnapped and killed

[NNN0LHI]

http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20080611122851589

Wednesday, June 11 2008 @ 12:28 PM CDT
Contributed by: WorkerFreedom

Despite kidnappings, murders, and other egregious human rights violations against union leaders and activists in Iraq, unions are continuing the fight to give Iraq's least powerful and least politically connected workers a voice in their own future.

Worker and Human Rights Violations in Iraq

By Solidarity Center, AFL-CIO

Despite kidnappings, murders, and other egregious human rights violations against union leaders and activists in Iraq, unions are continuing the fight to give Iraq's least powerful and least politically connected workers a voice in their own future.

Since 2003, dozens of union activists trying to build a new labor movement for Iraq have been kidnapped and killed. The most infamous instance was the brutal murder of international affairs representative Hadi Saleh, gunned down in Baghdad in January 2005. He had just returned with other Iraqi labor leaders from the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) World Congress in Miyazaki, Japan, the first time Iraqi unions had ever participated in this gathering of the world’s trade unions. These assassinations and kidnappings are ongoing. No Iraqi labor federation is immune, and no Iraqi workplace is safe.

During the first few weeks of 2007, Iraqi workers and unions were increasingly targeted in attacks on their leaders and headquarters. By the end of January, at least three Iraqi union leaders were dead and scores more injured. On March 27, Najim Abd-Jasem, general secretary of the Mechanics Workers’ Union and a co-founder of the Iraqi Trade Union Federation (now the General Federation of Iraqi Workers), was kidnapped in Baghdad. His body was found three days later, showing clear signs of torture.

[Peace Patriot]

1. The same thing is going on in the Bush Junta's client state, Colombia--

thousands of union leaders, and others--small peasant farmers, political leftists, human rights workers and journalists--slaughtered, by rightwing death squads with close ties to the Uribe government (on whom the Bushites have larded $5.5 BILLION in military aid).

It's sure looking like the Bush Junta is more than a war for oil, and for dominating trade routes. It is a war on workers. Literally.