Iran: Mahmood Salehi, leading labour activist arrested

From: Laborurnet.net:

Report by WPI England

Mahmood Salehi, a leading labour activist from the city of Saghez, was re-arrested on Monday April 9 by the Islamic regime’s security forces. Salehi who was at work at the time was taken during his lunch break by armed security forces to the public prosecutor’s office regarding his bail on charges of organizing May Day strikes and demonstrations last year.Later at the public prosecutor’s office, a revised court verdict was read to him summarily sentencing him to one year imprisonment and 3 years suspended sentence.

He was immediately transferred to the city of Sanandaj prison.Clearly this is an attempt to intimidate and attack the labour movement both in Iran and internationally. Last Year Manhood Salehi was bailed under immense international pressure from trade unions, and labour and progressive organizations internationally.

In addition, this is an attempt to undermine the vibrant workers’ movement Iran which is preparing to organize for this year’s international May Day celebrations following a huge teachers’ strike in Iran in the last couple of months over pay and conditions which resulted in the arrest of 45 teachers’ activists in the city of Hamedan on Saturday 7th April 2007.With nation-wide and daily protests such as the teachers’ strikes challenging the Islamic Republic of Iran, the regime is fearful of a powerful confrontation on May Day and is attempting to undermine the momentum of this movement by threats, intimidations and arrests of activists and labour leaders.

Note to the Editors:
Mahmood Salehi has been arrested twice since May 2003 for organizing May Day during recent last years. He was freed as a result of huge international campaigns for his release on both occasions. Mahmood Salehi has been recalled to the court over and over and has been under permanent threat and pressure by the Islamic Republic of Iran since his first arrest in May Day of 2003.

In a Related News: Iran: More Arrests of Teachers!

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Iran: Teacher and Journalist Brutally beaten up in Evin Prison

Teachers and Journalist in Evin Prison:

Potkin: Its the Iranian New Year, Nowrooz, and hundreds of Iranian teachers are in Evin prison. They should have spent Nowrooz with their families, around the Haft-Sin table waiting for the exact hour, minute and second when the Spring Equinox takes place. Their children should be thinking of nothing but their new clothes, and their new presents. Yet all they have on their mind is when will Mum or/and Dad come home?

What is the "crime" of Iranian teachers? Why are they in prison? According to the Islamic Republic, they have threatened the national security of the regime by peacefully demonstrating for a better standard of living!! What an insecure regime this Islamic Republic is that its security is so easily threatened. In fact all the teachers have asked for, is the enactment of a public sector pay bill passed by the parliament!

I wish I had time and could translate this article in this Iranian blog:
http://sajjadkhaksari.blogfa.com/
It is written by a reporter who got mixed up with the hundreds of teachers who were arrested. More than 50 plain clothes agents on motor bikes attack the teachers, and the reporter is taken along with the rest of the teachers to an abandoned house, where cleric judges decide who should go to Evin prison in summary trials that lasts a few minutes. He then describes how these ordinary decent people were treated. How men and women, old and young were beaten up and what kind of vulgar insults were hurled at the women teachers. How their headscarfs were pulled off and when the male teachers stood up for their female colleagues, how badly they were beaten up.

The army conscripts seem to be apologetic and sorry. One of them tells the inmates "Please forgive me for what they have made me do to you". But the plain clothes cavemen seem to be from another planet or another age! Everyone is asking "what kind of animals are they? Don't they have wives and kids themselves? Where are they from?"

And it wouldn't surprise me, if one day we find out these cavemen were imports from Iraq. May be Moqtada Sadr's followers who have escaped from Iraq recently.

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Iran Crushes Teachers ' Protest

Guardian: The authorities in Iran have arrested up to 1,000 teachers in a brutal crackdown that signals their determination to break a pay revolt. Riot police beat demonstrators with batons as they tried to gather outside Iran's parliament and education ministry and herded them into police vans and buses before transporting them to detention centres across Tehran.

Around 150 of those arrested in Wednesday's protest are still in custody, with the ringleaders believed to be in the capital's notorious Evin prison. Others were released after signing a commitment not to participate in "illegal" demonstrations.

The clampdown follows recent rallies outside parliament, which drew up to 10,000 demonstrators, many of whom displayed banners criticising President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government as part of their campaign for higher pay. An average university-educated secondary-school teacher earns £160-180 a month, below the poverty line and much less than workers in other government sectors.

Last week, police arrested six teachers' union leaders in an unsuccessful attempt to stop a gathering that coincided with a planned women's rights demonstration

Update1: During the final hours of yesterday, came the news that intelligence agents attacked the homes of cultural activists and arrested 5 of them, taking them to an undisclosed destination.

This attack began at about 11pm last night and continued until four in the morning, Tehran time. The names of those arrested in as follows:

1-Ali Akbar Baghani, Secretary General of the Kanoon Senfi-e Moaleman (Teachers Professional Association)
2-Mahmud Beheshti Langaroodi, spokesperson for the Association
3-Alierza Hashemi, Secretary General of the Teachers Association
4-Mohamd Davarai, member of the central committee of the Teachers Association
5-Ali Poor-Soleiman, member of the central committee of the Teachers Association

Those knowledgeable in the events said that some 20 individuals had been arrested, among whom were activists of the professional organization in the provinces, and towns across Iran. Some of these activists were on their way to Tehran to participate in the peaceful demonstrations that were to be held the next day in front of the Parliament buildings.

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سفره های خالی کارگران در آستانه ی نوروز (Empty Tables of Workers as The Iranian New Year Looming)

• در حالی که چانه زنی بر سر حداقل دستمزد کارگران در سال آینده ادامه دارد و کارشناسان پیش بینی می کنند، میزان حداقل دستمزدها بسیار پائین تر از حداقل های مورد نیاز خانوارهای کارگری باشد، هزاران کارگر ماه ها است که اساسا حقوقی دریافت نکرده اند. در آستانه ی سال نو، موج تعطیلی و ورشکستگی کارگاه ها و کارخانه ها و اخراج انبوه کارگران، و امتناع کارفرمایان از پرداخت دستمزدها، فشارهای طاقت فرسای زندگی برای کارگران ایران را دو چندان کرده است. کارگران ایرانی علیرغم وعده های پوچ دولت احمدی نژاد در مورد برقراری عدالت، امسال هم با سفره های خالی به استقبال نوروز می روند ...



Partial translation:


Empty Tables of Iranian Workers as The Iranian New Year Fastly Approaching:

...As experts predict that the minimum salaries are going to be far below the amount of required living expenses for workers, thosands of workers have not been paid their salaries. As the New Year looming (March 21st), waves of closures and bankruptcies of factories and workshops and laying off of masses of workers, and the refusal of the employers to pay their worker's salaries, for the Iranian workers life's oppressive and intolerable pressures have doubled. Iranian workers, despite the hollow promises of Ahmadinejad's government on justice, this year too, they are going to meet the New Year (No-Rooz) with empty tables.

UPDATE from WINSTON: According to Ireland based "International Living Organization", quality of life in Iran stands at 190th among the 195 countries listed in their chart. Iran is slightly above countries such as Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia and Yemen.I'd like to congratulate the Mullahs for such a great achievement.
در رده بندی کشورها بر حسب کیفیت زندگی، ایران تحت حاکمیت رژیم ملایان جنایتکار در ردیف صد و نودم از میان یکصد و نود و پنج کشور جهان قرار گرفته است و کمی بالاتر از کشورهایی مثل سودان، یمن، افغانستان، عراق و سومالی قرار دارد. بهمین دلیل خواستم مراتب قدردانی خود را از رژیم کثیف اخوندی اعلام نمایملینک اصلی

Ahmadinejad to his hungry masses: Eat Enriched Uranium!!!!

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