Protest against the harassment of the Iraqi Teachers Union!

Protest against the harassment of the Iraqi Teachers Union!

The Iraqi Government and the main political parties (ISCI, Al Dawa, Al Sadr Movement and the Iraqi Islamic Party) stand accused of trying to take over the Iraqi Teachers Union (ITU). Tell them to stop by signing the UK LabourStart action.

In January they organised bogus elections for a new, compliant union leadership. In February, Ibrahim al-Battat, the ITU leader in Basra, was arrested for three days for refusing to hand over the union's files. An arrest warrant has been issued for the ITU national leader Jasim Hussein Mohammed, who served time in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison during Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. He says "we are witnessing the dispossession of the union by the government and parties." Trade unions must be free of political and state interference. Freedom of association is a fundamental human right as set out in the core conventions of the International Labour Organisation, and that implies no outside interference in the internal democracy of the union. The Iraqi Constitution also guarantees the freedom of trade unions.

Send a protest message to the Iraqi political parties in London to tell their main offices to stop inferring in the affairs of the Iraqi teachers Union.