14.05.1998

Communists murdered

PCC solidarity

To the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq

Dear comrades,

Please accept our deepest sympathy and condolences at the loss of two leading members of your party, comrade Shapoor Abdul-Kadir and comrade Kabil Adil, brutally murdered by islamic terrorists on April 18 in the city of Erbil in the so-called ‘safe haven’ created in northern Iraq on the authority of the United Nations.

We are aware that the ‘safe haven’ has been allowed by the UN to fall under the armed rule of reactionary Kurdish bourgeois nationalist parties and that in the city of Erbil, Masoud Al-Barzani’s ruling Kurdistani Democratic Party has, since March 8, been turning a blind eye not only to the murders of comrades Shapoor and Kabil, but to the use of mosques and islamic institutions as centres for the issuing of fatwas promoting the killings of communists, women activists, equality activists and progressive and secular people generally.

Communist leaders embody the experience of struggle of the masses. They can only be replaced at great cost to the masses.

Communists of such calibre as Shapoor and Kabil, willing to fearlessly put themselves forward despite being fully aware of the dangers, and capable of leading millions of working people, are the salt of the earth. Their deaths are a tragic loss to the working class worldwide in its struggle for human self-liberation.

Stan Kelsey

Provisional Central Committee, Communist Party of Great Britain