Home > Iraqi Union Leader Asks For Help To Force U.S. To Withdraw From Iraq
Iraqi Union Leader Asks For Help To Force U.S. To Withdraw From Iraq
by Open-Publishing - Monday 20 June 20053 comments
Trade unions Wars and conflicts International USA
Hassan Juma’a Awad and Faleh Abbood Umara took a quiet boat tour Friday through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, thousands of miles from the port city where they live and work in Basra, Iraq.
Less than two weeks after allied forces entered the southern port city of Basra in 2003, Awad, Umara and other labor activists started the General Union of Oil Workers.
Such unions were outlawed under Saddam Hussein’s rule. And the union still may be illegal, the pair explained after the boat ride.
The two Iraqi men spoke through translators about the challenges today in their native land to about 60 labor leaders and activists opposed to the war at the Harry Bridges Institute & Community Labor Center in San Pedro.
A group called U.S. Labor Against the War is sponsoring the Iraqis’ nationwide speaking tour to talk about conditions in the Middle Eastern nation.
While happy that Hussein is out of power, the Iraqis said that their country’s people and labor rights still suffer.
"I ask you to help us pressure your administration to remove its forces in Iraq so we can rebuild our country," said Umara, 48, general secretary of the oil union. "If they mention the security situation, I say that we are brothers in Iraq. And brothers can fight, but brothers can reconcile."
About 35,000 Iraqis work in Basra’s oil industry, with about 23,000 part of the new union, said Awad, who serves as president.
From a labor perspective, Awad and Umara said they’re especially concerned that the laws forbidding unions in public sector industries haven’t been reversed.
They’re also worried that the Iraqi government and previous U.S. civil administration have pushed the country toward privatizing state-owned industries.
"My understanding is that unions don’t get their legitimacy from the government. Unions rely only on the workers," Awad, 53, said with a defiant tone. "We decided to organize ourselves without relying on the laws."
Awad added that newspapers financed by the Iraqi government regularly praise privatization as a positive step for the people, a notion Awad rejects.
A press officer at the U.S. State Department directed questions about labor laws to the Iraqi government and queries on privatization to the U.S. Agency for International Development.
An official at USAID couldn’t be reached Friday afternoon.
Awad and Umara both are members of the Shiite branch of Islam, which make up a majority of the population in Iraq and Basra.
Umara said people face extreme dangers while traveling to work. He said it’s common for American troops to shoot at Iraqi cars for driving too close.
"It’s like the occupation forces are the people of the land and we’re the foreigners," Umara said.
"If you complain, you may end up in Abu Ghraib (prison), and you don’t know what will happen to you there."
Awad dismissed the idea of an impending civil war between Shittes and minority Sunnis.
"Who is talking about war?" Awad said. "I am 53 years old, and I didn’t hear about Sunni and Shiite (divisions) before the occupation forces entered. I am Shiite, but I’m married to a Sunni woman."
Asked if things are better now than when Hussein was in power, Umara said, "Under any occupation, don’t expect things to get better."
Umara said he would have preferred the Iraqi people removed Hussein, adding that "America could have removed Saddam without this destruction. This is all about the oil."
Shannon Donato, president of the Harry Bridges Institute, said she was grateful to hear the "truth" about Iraq.
"For them to come to this country and take the time and energy to deliver the truth to the workers of this country — I hope the truth gets out," Donato said.
The attendees placed donations in a plastic bowl that was passed around during the presentation. Donato said $545 was collected to help finance the Iraqis’ tour and labor efforts in their homeland.
Forum posts
20 June 2005, 01:09
Remember all these cosy realationships of the Sowjet occupied countries during the cold war. That happens now to Iraq! The good doers of America think that Guantanamo Bay or Abu Gharib are Club Med ressorts!
Torture, ambush and murder is ok, whenever "they" do it.
Only a complete civil disobedience in Iraq can kick the new American Sowjets out!
Wonder why the start and feed this civil war in Iraq? Because they want to kill all Iraqi civilians!
20 June 2005, 23:27
That last statement, that the American people encourage the genocide of the Iraqi people, is both inflammatory, and rediculous. American troops are indeed occupying the region, to help increase the stability of post-conflict Iraq. Suicide bombers, and militant attacks threaten even your own police forces, what would stop them from harming the innocent public next if not for our troops being present?
The American people recognize that a military solution, is not always the best way to resolve world problems. We are a people that enjoy peace, and treasure human life. Until the region is secure, with a viable, effective government, and police that can protect and insure public safety, unfortunatly the American presence is necessary. As soon as we can satisfy those conditions, we will go, and not until. Nobody wants our armed services home more than the American people. Those are our sons and daughters shedding blood and dying, for your freedom from a dictatorship, and that miserable pile of sand you call a country.
23 June 2005, 03:15
This last statement must be vilified. It is this US that has destroyed the stability of Iraq. It is the US that has introduced weapons of mass destruction, in the form of napalm bombs and enriched uranium weaponry hurled at innocent Iraqis. The Iraqi people were civilized way before your ancestors knew anything about indoor plumbing, Mr. Academic Achiever. When the US occupation finally runs its course and it will, the Iraqi people will make a lasting peace with each other, simply because a foreign invader has left, just like Americans made a lasting peace with each other after the hated British had left our shores. It is the presence of a foreign invader that has these people in an uproar. A foreign invader that has demonstrated all to well its willingness to decimate cities and destroy villages, all in the name of ’Democracy’. What were the revolutionary minutemen of colonial America to the Hessian troops who served King George III? Why, they were saboteurs and insurgents, Mr.Academic Superachiever. How I despise the hypocrisy that is implicit in your statement sir. Calling Iraq a miserable pile of sand does nothing to help your argument. It only gives more evidence of your hypocrisy, your arrogance and your mind-numbing ignorance of current events, if not world history. If you love this unjust war so much, why don’t you and your neo-con sympathizers go enlist and fight it? Why must our sons and daughters fight it for you? Show your patriotism and enlist. The world would benefit so much if war-mongers like yourself and terrorists, with whom you have a lot more in common with you than you realize, would go after each others’ throats and leave the rest of us peace loving people alone.You and your neocon allies aren’t exporting democracy, what a god-forsaken lie that Bush soundbite has become. But, you are most definitely exporting hypocrisy. And with that ’exportation’ all the moral authority that the US once enjoyed since WWII, even after the debacle of Vietnam, will be gone. In the eyes of the world, we already are a nation of hypocrites.