PUK attacks striking workers

Submitted by Anon on 13 August, 2006 - 5:07

by Alan Porter

On 1 August the Worker-communist Party of Iraq and related campaigning organizations staged a protest against state terror in Iraqi Kurdistan. That week forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, part of the Kurdish government, had opened fire on a picket line at the Tasloja cement factory in Sulimaniya.

Early reports had indicated that the PUK had killed 3 and injured 13 of the workers, who were striking for a pay rise and the reinstatement of 300 sacked workers. Fortunately, it later became clear that the workers rumoured dead were in fact ‘only’ badly injured. Nevertheless, the PUK's decision to shoot striking workers demonstrates its indifference to the lives of Kurdish workers and hostility to their free organization. This from a supposedly “social-democratic” party affiliated to the ‘Socialist’ International which includes the Labour Party.

The protest - including Iraqi comrades living in Britain as well as activists from Workers’ Liberty and Iraq Union Solidarity - outside the London office of the PUK demanded that the strikers' demands be accepted and that the Kurdish government admit the rights of going on strike and free expression. Talking to comrades from the WCPI, the PUK claimed that they were prosecuting the gunmen who attacked the workers, and that they would address the workers’ grievances.

We must fight in solidarity with the labour movement in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan in the face of militias under the control of bourgeois parties and Islamist leaders. The WCPI claims that the PUK amounts to “an authority serving capital owned by militias” - in the face of the nationwide rule of the reactionaries' brute force, Iraqi and Kurdish workers urgently need support.

www.iraqunionsolidarity.org

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.