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Bekijk Volledige Versie : Amerikanen arresteren Iraakse Vakbondleiders



lennart
12-12-03, 14:42
U.S. Arrests Iraqi Union Leaders
News Feature, David Bacon,
Pacific News Service, Dec 10, 2003

Editor's Note: There's another kind of battle being waged in Iraq -- the struggle for worker's rights. Iraqi union organizers say the U.S. authority is working against them.

SAN FRANCISCO--U.S. occupation forces in Iraq escalated their efforts to paralyze Iraq's new labor unions with a series of arrests this weekend.

On Dec. 6, according to a union spokesperson interviewed by phone, a convoy of 10 Humvees and personnel carriers descended on the old headquarters building of the Transport and Communications Workers union, in Baghdad's central bus station, which has been used since June as the office of the Iraqi Workers Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU). Twenty soldiers jumped out, stormed into the building, put handcuffs on eight members of the Federation's executive board, and took them into detention.

"They gave no reason at all, despite being asked over and over," says IFTU spokesperson Abdullah Muhsin. Soldiers painted over the name of the federation on the front of the building with black paint, Muhsin says. The union had few resources, "but we did have a few files, and they took those," Muhsin adds. Ironically, the office had posters on the walls condemning terrorism, which soldiers tore down in the raid.

Although the eight were released the following day, there was no explanation from the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the U.S. occupation government in Iraq, for the detentions.

The bus station raid followed the detention of two other trade union leaders on November 23 -- Qasim Hadi, general secretary of the Union of the Unemployed, and Adil Salih, another leader of the organization. Hadi had been arrested twice before by occupation troops, for leading demonstrations of unemployed workers demanding unemployment benefits and jobs. In the November raid, CPA troops said they found two guns in the union's office, which was only permitted to have one. Hadi explained at the time that the organization has been the subject of threats and fatwahs by Iraqi religious parties, and needed weapons for self-defense.

Hadi and Salih were released after being detained for a day.

(...)
http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=0ea74f4207000f2a20cd2 bdf4ab0e2a9

Leve de vrijheid :vreemd:

plexus
12-12-03, 16:35
..nobody likes the union :ninja: