Over the past few weeks, more and more Iraqi workers and unions are becoming victims of attacks. At least three Iraqi union leaders are dead, and scores more have been injured.

In a horrific attack on January 31 — a day the global labor movement has dubbed Black Wednesday — Khalil Ibrahim Al-Mashhadani, Vice-President of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW), was injured along with scores of other union members in a bombing close by the federation. Al-Mashhadani, who was hospitalized, is reportedly in stable condition. On the same day, the GFIW branch office in Ninevah was destroyed by a car bomb.

And the horror had not ended. Also on January 31, the bodies of three Iraqi labor law professors were found. Armed militants had abducted Adnan Al-Abed, General Counsel to the GFIW and Professor of Law at Al-Nahrain University in Baghdad, along with two colleagues as they stood in front of the law school building. Al-Abed, a prominent and respected labor expert, had recently helped draft a new labor law sponsored by the International Labor Organization.

On January 16, Mohamed Hameed, an organizer with the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI), was at an open market in southern Baghdad when militia gunmen opened fire. He was killed along with 15 other civilians.

On January 11, militia gunmen abducted eight Iraqi Oil Ministry engineers, all FWCUI members, who were enroute to a press conference on rising fuel prices. Four engineers were released. One was found dead, with evidence of having been tortured. The other three are still missing.  
 

In the face of this targeted violence, the Iraqi labor movement is standing firm. The GFIW Executive Bureau issued a declaration that concluded with the following statement:  
 
"The terrorist acts, the annihilation of trade unionists, the destruction and occupation of trade union offices, the freezing of the trade union movement’s assets, and the putting of obstacles in our way will only increase our resolve to build an independent, democratic trade union movement that is free of government and party hegemony."

Read the International Trade Union Confederation response

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