Category: gmoses

Dear Friends

I was glad to read the article about the workers in Nasiriyan. Finally someone is willing to recognize cities in Iraq as a field of political and social struggle where the workers, peacelovers and freedom seeking people strive to become a third alternative.

As for Rassim al Awadi [official GUTU delegate at the ILO], he is a previous Baath figure as he used to be an official in the unions under Sadam’s regime, but he is not one of the 50 something deck. Many leftists in the west have recognized him before meeting others. As the Baathist were the only ones working during these decades, they have more means and skills of communicating and also skills in hiding their anti-worker history.

As for Muqtada al Sadr, he has recognized the interim government following the steps of Al Sistani (a higher ranking Shiite cleric), but people say that the true story was that after all the killing in his ranks and the destruction in his areas, most of his supporters have abandoned him and preferred to revert to more peaceful ways of political struggle.

It is a well-known fact in Baghdad, that when you see a woman covered up with black from head to toe, with only the eyes showing, when you see her wearing black gloves and stockings in the unbearable heat of June, you talk to her to find out that she has had no access to education….and she [dresses] like that because she is a follower of Muqtada Al Sader – not that she knows any of his teachings…nobody does, it is just a religious position that he’s inherited from his father. Many of the begging families in the streets (and they are a lot in this post-war Iraq) are dressed like that; i.e. the women look like black plastic bags and usually they are denied any education even if the family is well off.

Best Regards

Yanar Mohammed

Chairperson of Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq

Editor in Chief of Al Mousawat (Equality) Newspaper
http://www.equalityiniraq.com

Kurds Must Fight for Rights Peacefully Now (June 17, 2004)
http://www.kurdishmedia.com/reports.asp?id=2046

The Kurdish leadership must remember if they don’t get what they want now peacefully, they will force the Kurdish people into the role of terrorists by fighting the future Iraqi government. This is because the future elected Iraqi government – in six months time – will certainly deny the Kurd’s rights, but it will have the backing of the USA, Europe and UN. Hence the Kurds will be labeled terrorists.

Total failure for Assyrians (June 17, 2004)
http://www.assyrianchristians.com/commentary_itisuptous_june_17_04.htm

Total and complete failure! There may be excuses, explanations, but to every Assyrian living in Iraq the message was clear – our leaders have totally and completely failed. We are alone.

Minister of Displacement and Migration, Pascale Warda: Warda is president of the Assyrian Women’s Union in Iraq, applying her experience with human rights, refugees, and civil society in her work with Assyrian women. Ms. Warda co-founded the Iraqi Society for Human Rights in Damascus, Syria, and served as the representative of the Assyrian Democratic Movement Foundation (ADM) in Paris—the highest position of any woman in the ADM, which is the primary Assyrian political party in Iraq. Ms. Warda holds a degree from the Human Rights Institute at the University of Lyon in France.

Assyrian Priest’s Letter to Bush (June 14, 2004)
http://www.aina.org/news/20040616143342.htm

Therefore, Mr. President, we pray and hope that the U.S., having liberated Iraq, will not pull out its forces from the country, under the ongoing and incessant attacks and negative reporting from a liberal media, until strong democratic institutions have been established and enough safeguards have been put in place for the protection of the minorities, and in particular Assyrian Christians, from oppression and religious sectarianism.

We, the Assyrians, were there in Mesopotamia, now called Iraq, for thousands of years B.C., and history is a witness to the fact that we had build empires and civilizations in that part of the world long before Islam, as a religion or a political entity, appeared on the face of the earth. We are the indigenous people of Mesopotamia. Our people should not be driven out of their ancestral homeland by radical Islamic movements, by religious intolerance or by persecution. We have survived all those forces for millennia by the blood of our martyrs. Now that we are facing a new challenge, we hope that the United States and Britain will not sit as neutral spectators should the situation in Iraq deteriorate and our people are victimized again. For more than a decade, the United States and Britain have protected the Kurds and the Shi?ites from the savagery and tyranny of Saddam Hussein?s regime through the no-fly-zones in the north and south of Iraq. We hope that the same protection will be extended to all the minorities when sovereignty is finally turned over to the Iraqi government. That way, we hope, our Christian Assyrian people will be able to live in peace, like all the other ethnic and religious groups, in a sovereign and independent Iraq redeemed as a member of the civilized world. –Rev. Awiqam Pithyou, Chicago

CPA Official History–Protest Works (May 25, 2004)
http://www.cpa-iraq.org/pressreleases/20040525_iraqi_women.html

In November 2003, the CPA and the Iraqi Governing Council agreed to a process to restore Iraq’s sovereignty, and to adopt a fundamental law leading to a permanent constitution ensuring equal rights for all Iraqis. The process of framing this law generated weeks of democratic debate within the Council. Late in the deliberations, some members attempted to impose Shari’a family law, in the form of “Resolution 137,” to restrict women’s equal rights. In response, hundreds of Iraqi women took to the streets in peaceful protest, while women leaders argued forcefully behind closed doors for repeal. The women of Iraq are proud of their role in persuading the Iraqi Governing Council to overturn Resolution 137 on March 1, 2004.

Al Kut Sewing Coop (April 1, 2004)
http://www.mercycorps.org/items/1806/

With assistance from Mercy Corps, the cooperative is taking bold steps to increase productivity, streamline business processes and improve facilities. With a grant of $55,000 from Mercy Corps’ USAID Iraq Community Action Program, the co-op building is being rehabilitated and new sewing machines are being purchased. Um Noor will also start using computer technology for the creation of new designs, a process that has all been done manually to date.

Interim Constitution: Hailed by Women, Opposed by Ayatollah (March 8, 2004)
http://www.iraq.net/displayarticle2234.html

The interim constitution, coincidentally signed on International Women’s Day, guarantees women 25 per cent of the seats in Iraq’s proposed parliament.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called the legal text “an obstacle”, stunning the council and US officials.
The 75-year-old Iranian-born Ayatollah is concerned that the document would allow minority Kurds and Sunnis to veto majority decisions in which the Shia, who make up 60 per cent of the population, would hold sway.

Halabja Women’s Center Opened (March, 2004)
http://www.wadinet.de/projekte/newiraq/women/intensifying.htm

Now after the area is liberated from the Islamist rule it is possible to start with a variety of projects and programs.

Iraqi Women’s League Re-Emerges (Feb. 20, 2004)
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=3221

“We had a war before with a tyrant. Now we have a war with those religious men who think women are just instruments to bear children and create the next generation,” she said.

“Reconstruction of Iraq” is now a euphemism for the daylight robbery of our resources. IWL Appeal

Najaf Human Rights and Democracy Center opens (Feb. 18, 2004)
http://www.iraqcoalition.org/pressreleases/20040218_najaf_HRC.html

The people of Najaf will now use the building to promote democracy and human rights. During the Center’s opening, Sheikh Khalid Nuamani said: “God created human beings with dignity. We are here to return to the people of Najaf their human dignity.”

Karbala Women’s Rights Center [CPA & USAID] (Feb. 16, 2004)
http://www.iraqcoalition.org/pressreleases/20040216_woman_karbala.html

Located in a former Ba’athist building, the women named their new Center after the revered Zainab Al-Hawra’a, the granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammad.

Diwaniyah Women’s Rights Center opens (Jan. 9, 2004)
http://www.iraqcoalition.org/pressreleases/20040127a_women-diwan.htm

The purpose of the Center is to assist widowed, impoverished, and vulnerable women as they improve their lives and those of their children. The Center will help enable the women to participate in a free, democratic Iraq.

Condoleezza Rice opened a center for women’s human rights in Diwanya. In her opening speech – delivered via satellite – she assured Iraqi women that “we are with you in spirit”. It was attended by commanders and soldiers of the occupying forces, but by very few Iraqi women. Meanwhile in Diwanya itself, local farmers (many of them women) were unable to start the winter season because of unexploded cluster bombs on their land.

Over countless coffees, the women explain. They are educated, resilient and survivors of atrocities of Saddam’s regime. They replaced male workers during the eight years of the Iran-Iraq war, and set up cottage industries to support their families during 13 years of brutal sanctions. They are not about to forgive the US or British governments for strengthening Saddam’s regime, imposing sanctions, and destroying their cities in two wars. Iraqi women know that the occupation forces are in the country to guard their own interests, not those of the Iraqis.

In refusing to take part in any initiative by the US-led occupation, or its Iraqi allies, women are practicing passive resistance. They adopted the same technique against Saddam’s despised General Union of Iraqi women. Then, they managed to cause the collapse of one of the richest, most powerful institutions for women in the Middle East. Perhaps they will do so again. Haifa Zangana

Iraqi Women’s Letter to Paul Bremer (Dec. 18, 2003)
http://www.womensorganizations.org/pages.cfm?ID=62

From 12 Women’s & Human Rights Groups regarding sex discrimination under CPA rule:

“under the November 15th Agreement, the CPA has given control over the creation of the transitional government to the existing CPA appointed councils, which are male-dominated by your making and practice an anti-womens rights agenda.”

“The bottom line is that the CPA has the responsibility to fix the imbalance of power created by CPA appointments. This can be done in accordance with the November 15th Agreement by adding a requirement that an equal proportion of men and women be selected to the provincial caucuses, and by requiring that the caucuses select an equal number of men and women to serve as delegates for the national assembly; and, further, by requiring that the national assembly ensure equal representation in the executive branch, high-level ministry appointments, and the judiciary.”

“There is ample authority under International Law for the use of a temporary quota in this situation, especially given U.N. Security Resolution 1325 and the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, to which Iraq is a signatory. However, given that the power imbalance was caused by the CPA, we do not view this as a quota issue, but rather a serious mistake that must be corrected by whatever means necessary.”

“In addition, we call upon the CPA to immediately disband the all-male Fundamental Law committee and ensure women make up 50% of any such committees created in the future.”

In December 2003, a coalition of Iraqi women’s groups, most of whom had supported the US invasion, delivered a scathing letter to the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) denouncing a litany of discriminatory political appointments. Medea Benjamin

Iraq: Increasing Domestic Violence Reported (Oct. 14, 2003)
http://www.peacewomen.org/news/Iraq/October03/domesticviolence.html

WADI also recently carried out an assessment in the south of the country. Having visited Al-Hillah, Amara and Al-Kut, its staff found that domestic violence was also widespread there. “The situation is much worse in the south; it has been completely neglected, and the fact that there is no data on this issue shows that there is no assistance for women suffering there,” the project coordinator for WADI, Thomas Osten Sacken, told IRIN from Frankfurt, Germany, after ending a visit to southern Iraq.

Heartland of Iraq Women’s Conference (Oct. 4-7, 2003)
http://www.womenforiraq.org/heartland.php

Another member of the Women for a Free Iraq, Zainab al-Suwaij, took a courageous step by speaking in favor of separation of religion and state. As a devout Muslim who is the granddaughter of a prominent religious scholar in Basra, her statement put in motion a debate that energized a silent majority of the women.

RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE WOMEN OF SOUTH CENTRAL IRAQ [pdf]
Delivered to Ambassador Paul L. Bremer on October 7, 2003
• At least one third of the members of the Constitutional Committee should be women.
• All laws that violate women’s rights should be abolished, and new laws must be enacted that protect the rights of women.
• The future Iraqi Constitution should assign a quota of no less than 30% participation of women in all political institutions, including but not restricted to the national parliament, and
regional and local councils.
• Monitoring committees should be established in all government institutions to ensure that women’s rights are respected, and to provide women with educational, economic and employment
support according to strategies identified by the women themselves.

Al Hillah Human Rights Lawyer Referral (July 26, 2003)
http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/…

Now if a citizen of Al Hillah contests a government action that is viewed as violation of their rights, the Human Rights Association will provide them an attorney free of charge.

What Iraqi Unionists are Trying to Teach America and Why We Can’t Hear Them

[Afternoon update 6/16/2004: new paragraphs inserted between ** double asterisks below]

By GREG MOSES

http://peacefile.org/wordpress

A comprehensive, nation-by-nation survey of worker’s rights got a 170-word write up last week in the “World in Brief” section of the Washington Post. So we can’t say that workers of the world were completely ignored.

http://www.icftu.org/survey2004.asp?language=EN

Neither can we say that the Post was unselective in its choice of detail. Of 129 labor activists killed around the world in 2003, 90 were killed in Columbia alone, suggesting that the vortex of narco-politics is a meatgrinder for workers’ rights, too.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26610-2004Jun8.html

Nor was the Post standing alone last week in its preoccupation with other issues. Like wallpaper, the press lavished coverage upon a week-long funeral for that former President who was so sincere about freedom for the people that he broke the legs of public-sector unionism.

But last week, if you were eager to hear American journalists reporting from Geneva, where trade unions of the world were holding their most important annual gathering, in conjunction with the United Nations’ International Labor Organization (ILO), then you were taught another sad but predictable lesson about things a corporate press does not do.

On June 10, the Associated Press did write a 400-word summary of a 112-page global study on child labor that was released from the Geneva conference. “Sadly, many countries don’t see domestic child labor as a problem,” said author of the ILO study, June Kane. Of the ten million children affected, the AP spoke to none.

As for activities of the Iraqi unionists at Geneva, the only accounts I found were written by the embattled unionists themselves. Abdullah Muhsin, the London-based voice for the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) reports a very interesting conversation between his delegation and Korean unionists.

http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/archives/000042.html

“The meeting focused on the presence of Korean troops in Iraq and the proposal for an additional 600 soldiers to go to Iraq to help with humanitarian needs for construction, and for medical aid,” reports Muhsin.

“The meeting also discussed the 30 June transfer of power to the Iraqis, the role of the UN and the proposed draft UN resolution on Iraq.”

“Both sides agreed,” reports Mushin, “that the occupation of Iraq must now end, that the UN must take a leading role in the [future] of Iraq and that real power and sovereignty must be handed to the transitional Iraqi government established on 30 June 2004.”

Muhsin’s report evades details of any conclusions that might have been reached during that conversation regarding the 600 additional Korean soldiers. Should they stay home? Should they come to Iraq only under UN supervision? An independent reporter might have pressed those questions.

Muhsin drops quite a few names and gives an impression of widely nurtured contacts. The IFTU is emerging from war as a leading voice of labor in Iraq. In the opinion of Owen Tudor, a leading organizer of Trade Union Councils (TUC) in Europe, the IFTU is one of the labor groups in Iraq that enjoys “genuine links with workers in workplaces,” and is, “more or less representative of ordinary workers.”

http://www.tuc.org.uk/international/tuc-7859-f0.cfm

However, feisty opposition unionists in Iraq continue to question the credentials of Muhsin and IFTU. A Monday afternoon email (June 14) from Iraqi unionist Aso Jabbar relays an uncompromising statement by Falah Alwan, President of the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI).

[email and attachment available to editors on request]

In the words of Alwan, “fascist traditions” are being continued in Iraq, because the provisional government is trying to designate one official union (Muhsin’s IFTU), and because unions are also being discouraged (in fine Reagan fashion) from organizing public service employees.

It is not yet clear how the “months old” unions of public sector employees will fare under the emerging Iraqi state. As Tudor explains in his brief review of history, public service unions had once thrived in Iraq before they were banned by Saddam Hussein in 1987 (the decade that began with Reagan’s 1981 order to fire the striking air-traffic controllers).

As for IFTU’s status as the only union to be recognized by the emerging Iraqi state, Alwan’s opposition union, FWCUI, claims more than 300 endorsers to its complaint, filed with the ILO, that the emerging government’s arrangement with IFTU violates workers’ basic rights to organize their own unions. So there is widespread agreement that the IFTU’s relationship to the developing Iraqi state is not healthy for workers of the world.

http://www.wpiraq.org/english/2004/uui090604.htm

**On June 16, Jabbar provided via email a “final report” prepared by the Geneva delegation of the Campaign Against the Occupation and For Labour Rights in Iraq.

According to the 4-page report, a coalition of labor delegates did on June 11 present a formal complaint to the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association. A follow-up hearing is scheduled for November. While trying not to take sides regarding which union would be best for the Iraqi workers to choose, the labor coalition did lodge a complaint against the Iraqi governing council’s “Decree No. 16” that names the IFTU as the only state-approved union.

“It is up to the Iraqi workers themselves to decide freely and without any external interference the paths and means it will deem necessary for defending the workers’ interests in Iraq,” says the labor coalition’s final report. “We intend, moreover, to state most strongly that not one step can be made towards democracy if the workers’ right to freedom to organize is not completely respected.”**

In a Friday column for the Nation, labor reporter David Bacon, who also serves as an editor at the USLAW website, makes it clear that anti-war unionists in the USA are not choosing favorites. Bacon treats IFTU as a legitimate union, even if USLAW agrees that the Iraqi state has no legitimate right to name IFTU as the sole representative of Iraqi workers. USLAW’s fund drive promises to support both FWCUI and IFTU.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040628&s=bacon

In the “Arab world,” it is widespread practice to name a single, state-designated union. If IFTU’s offical status violates workers’ rights to organize their own unions, so does every other state-approved union in the “Arab world.” In Februrary, a coalition of Arab NGO’s, headed by Hasan Barghouthi, announced an initiative to support more independence and democracy among trade unions in Arab nations. Barghouthi’s organizational website at dwrc.org is still under construction.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/role/globdem/globgov/2004/0212arab.htm

While the rest of the world may agree that IFTU should not serve as the exclusive, state-approved union for Iraqi workers, it is the IFTU which arrives in Geneva as the only “official delegation” listed by the ILO for the workers of Iraq.

Click to access delegates-final.pdf

Yet, in the subtle world of Iraq’s emerging politics, it is not quite true to say that IFTU is Iraq’s official delegation to ILO. The people mentioned by Muhsin as IFTU delegates are NOT listed by the ILO as belonging to IFTU. Instead, Muhsin and his colleagues are officially listed as “advisers” to the General Union of Trade Unions (GUTU?).

The name change from IFTU to GUTU, and the designation of Muhsin and company as “advisers” may have only minor implications. But during these intense days of “reconstruction” such small details suggest that the legacy of another tradition continues. Under the regime of Saddam Hussein, the state-approved union was known as the General Federation of Trade Unions or GFTU, not far in spelling from GUTU. As recently as February, Tudor reports that the GFTU was still active in Iraq and that the IFTU was under pressure from other unionists in the “Arab world” to merge with GFTU into a single organization that could serve as the state’s exclusive, official union.

http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/article.php?id=4066

As I have complained above, lack of independent reporting on these interesting poltics leave details unexplained. Who for instance is Rassim Hussein Al-Awadi, the figure listed by the ILO as the actual “delegate” of the GUTU? And why does his name not appear among the usual list of worker-elected IFTU officers? Is this the same Baath Party Regional command chairman, Brig. Gen. Husayn al-Awadi, who was arrested by coalition forces in June of 2003, listed as number 53 of the 55 most-wanted members of the former regime?

If your neck is beginning to tighten at the sight of so many acronyms and layers of identity, welcome to the re-organization of civil society in occupied Iraq. We have not yet addressed the Kurdish labor groups, nor the teachers union, but we can save those for another day. (The acronym GUTU, by the way, is homonymous with the name of ancient mountain people from whom present-day Kurds are said to be descended.)

http://iraq.asinah.net/en/wikipedia/h/hi/history_of_the_kurds.html

In the meantime, opposition unionists in Iraq continue to provide hot copy for readers interested in the vigorous exercise of democratic debate. The statement released Monday afternoon via email from Alwan’s FWCUI says, “The essential issue of the labour movement in Iraq does not lie in finding trade unions, forming branches, or completing its staff. Currently the race in Iraq is about which one of the parties or organisations can fill the power vacuum.”

“The workers are deprived from forming their own independent organisations, and kept away from doing their daily living business to form a government that excludes labour–‘the majority’–from any role in the Iraqi political future.”

If exclusion of workers from meaningful power has a remedy, it must include a radical shift of emphasis among journalists and citizens of America. The same reporters who quiz experts about the possibility of democracy in Iraq, might ask themselves what they mean by democracy-—whether it includes workers’ rights to self organize. And if workers’ rights are essential to democracy, then don’t these rights deserve more coverage from the so-called democratic press?

David Bacon, for example, gives credit to, “new unions in the southern oil fields and refineries [who] defeated the Coalition Provisional Authority’s attempts to lower wages and forced Halliburton to abandon plans for replacing them with foreign workers for reconstruction work.”

Yet if Iraq’s provisional government continues to develop along lines already drawn, argues Alwan, the emerging Iraqi state, “will deprive the workers from the opportunity of forming their own unions which as a result will repeat the same old methods and conclude in the loss of the workers endeavours to get rid of the state controlled unions, and that means what is happening in Iraq is nothing but formal democracy.”

The formal democracy that America is bringing to Iraq is not real democracy says Alwan. But have we grown so accustomed to formal democracy in post-Reagan America, that we forget how to support a struggle for real democracy in Iraq? What are the chances that news outlets owned by corporations can support independent reporting about workers’ rights?