KIRKUK — Workers here commemorated May Day for the first time in three decades with a rally held in the garden of the North Oil Company, the northern division of Iraq's state-owned oil industry. The evening rally was attended by 3000 Iraqi Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen.
The crowd listened to Rebwar Ahmed, a leader of the Worker Communist Party of Iraq (WCPI), which was he main organiser of the May 1 event in Kirkuk. Ahmed criticised the pro-US occupation position adopted by the Kurdish nationalist parties — the Kurdish Democratic Party and the patriotic union of Kurdistan and highlighted the common interests of the working class throughout Iraq.
Other speakers were Layla cement factory workers' representative Ramadhan Ssabir, women's rights campaigner and WCPI leader Nasik Ahmed, North Oil Company workers' leader Hameed Abid Al-Ubaid and WCPI political bureau members Sameer Adil and Tahir Hasan.
Hasan stressed the necessity for the immediate withdrawal from Iraq of US troops and called for their replacement by a UN peacekeeping force.
Meanwhile, the WCPI has established offices in Kirkuk, Baghdad and Nasiriya. Several thousand copies of the weekly WCPI paper Al-Shiuye Al-Umaliyeh have also been distributed in Baghdad, Nasiriya and Kirkuk.
[For more information, visit the WCPI web site: <http://www.wpiraq.org>.]
From Green Left Weekly, May 14, 2003.
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