by The Federation of Workers' Council and Unions in Iraq – FWCUI, Baghdad
A group of armed gangs belong to Muktada Al Sadr have attempted to evacuate factories and workshops in order to turn them into bastions and military positions to fight the American and Italian forces inside Nasiriyah city. Both Aluminum and Sanitary Supplies factory workers in Nasiriyah have refused to evacuate their work places despite many threats made to their lives; declining from turning them into battle fields which would mean either destroying them or open them for robbery and looting. They insisted on remaining inside their factories in order to defend them.
This brave and firm position of workers in Nasiriyah is a practice that workers would endeavor to generalize in all areas facing military confrontation between the US troops and the armed militias confronting them, despite all pretexts and motivations.
The civilians will make sure to block the armed militias from turning the peaceful residential areas into centers for attacking the US, British, and other forces, and also to prevent the occupying forces from remaining inside the cities and residential areas.
We completely reject the turning of workers’ and civilians’ work and living places into reactionary war-fronts between the two poles of terrorism in Iraq; the US and their allies from one side, and the terrorists in the armed militias, well known for their enmity to Iraqi people’s interests, from the other. We will confront the attempts of these militias aiming at disturbing the security and stability of the population, and curtail their attempts to push society into civil war and further destruction and pain.
by the Permanent Secretariat of the National Confederation of Labor (CNT)
In Madrid, we have been killed again this 11th March. We, workers, simple people, are the victims once again, this time torn to pieces and in the wildest way. We, workers, simple people, are always the victims of all sort of terrorism, the obvious and the disguised one; we are victims of precariousness, of unemployment, of poverty, of manipulation, of the inappropriately called work casualties, we are hostages and cannon fodder in all wars, in all confrontations of interests, of all fanaticism’s, of all powers. We are victims of the decisions, the interests and aims of minorities alien to us and who use us as a shield and exchange currency.
In Madrid, in Iraq, in Palestine, in Israel, in Afghanistan, in New York, in Chicago, in Vitoria, in Russia, in Chechnya... they kill us everywhere, and we have been killed for causes which are not ours.
Who the people are behind this particular atrocity is irrelevant, they have hit the weak, the ones who are not able to negotiate, the ones who have no power of decision. They show their disdain to the working class, the simple people.
If we had any hope that such brutality would not be used, the facts have removed it. We want to say clearly that only workers, simple people, those who have no escort nor armored car, those who do not decide the lives and futures of others’ are able to mourn our dead ones; we can say, loudly and with real pain, that we are with the victims and their families, because so we are.
A hug, no words, with the heart, to all those directly affected. Their world destroys us, let us build ours.