Union members pay the cost of ISIS conquest of Ramadi

25 May 2015, By Owen Tudor

When ISIS takes over a city like Ramadi, near Baghdad in Iraq, the news bulletins are full of discussion about the future of Iraq, who’s to blame for the ISIS advance, how to reverse it and the horror facing the Sunni inhabitants, . We often forget that the human cost includes trade union members and activists, who have been targeted wherever ISIS takes over. Trade unionists are among the first to be targeted because they are secular, democratic and answer to a different authority – workers’ solidarity – to that promoted by ISIS.

Tonight we’ve heard from the Iraqi trade union movement that seven members of gas and oil unions in Ramadi have been executed by ISIS. We have sent our condolences, sympathy and solidarity to their unions, their colleagues and families.

Our dead colleagues are:

Salih Salman, president of the oil union in al- Nabar province

Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed, head of the union committee at the gas factory in Ramadi

Nafih Yahor Hussein, union member

Monier Farhan Mohammed, union member

Mustafa Naji Abdullah, union member

Hamid Jihad Mohammed, union member

Moufagh Yahor al-Dilimi, member

It’s always important to remember that, whatever trade unionists face in countries like ours, in other parts of the world they pay for their activism with their lives. An injury to one is an injury to all.