حزب کمونیست کارگری ایران وب سایت رسمی حزب کمونیست کارگری ایران
Workers and People of Iran Expect Your Support
You are well aware of the systematic repression of workers, women, and youth during the whole life of the Islamic Republic of Iran. But, are you aware that Islamic Republic whipped 17 workers, 30 to 100 lashes each, based on a complaint by employer and Harasat (an organ of suppression inside the factories) because they protested against expulsion?
This is not the first time that workers have been subjected to lashing in Iran. Seddiqh Amjadi, Fares Gavilian and Habib Kalakani were whipped in February 2007 for participating in a May Day rally. In February 2013 Peyman Nodinian was summoned from classroom in Sanandaj and received 20 lashes. The sentence of 37 lashes for Siavash Eslami was implemented in August 2012by the orders of the Islamic Court of Sary. You will have been informed of all these instances at the time. Victims of whipping are not limited to workers. Women have been whipped again and again for not observing the Islamic Hijab, and just yesterday, on 26 May 2016, 35 graduate boys and girls were subjected to 99 lashes each on the charge of holding mixed graduation celebrations and for drinking alcohol.
On August of 2014, four workers from Razi Petrochemicals in Bandar Imam were sentenced to six months of imprisonment and 50 lashes each, but this sentence has been suspended for two years. On March of 2015 five workers of the Chadermaloo mine in Yazd were sentenced to suspended prison terms, monetary fund, and flogging, on the charge of disturbing the public peace and rule, and are waiting for the final verdict of the appeal court.
The issue here is not even the cruel exploitation of workers in iran and deprivation from the right to organize and protest. Our emphasis here is the fact that Islamic Republic has taken effrontery to such a place that whips workers and teachers and young graduates in order to humiliate them and break their spirits, and specially, in order to prevent from building organisations independent of the government.
The repression of workers and executions have intensified during the presidency of Rouhani and at the moment a number of workers’ and teachers’ leaders are in prison because of their protest against lack of rights and wages that, according to the statistics provided by the regime itself, are four times under the poverty line. Among these are Jafar Azimzadeh, who is sentenced to 6 years in prison and is on hunger strike for the last 34 days, and is facing death threat; Behnam Ebrahimzadeh, who has been sentence to 9 years of additional prison term after serving 5 years in jail already; Mohammad Jarrahi who has been sentenced to 5 years in jail and served all that while suffering from thyroid cancer. Also, heavy sentences have been passed against tens of worker and teacher activists, and every once in a while some of them are arrested and are sent to jail.
We expect you to firmly condemn the Islamic Republic and its criminal judiciary system for its medieval actions. We expect you to put pressure on Islamic Republic until it ends whipping workers and the youth and until these types of medieval punishments are banned, until it releases all jailed workers and teachers and other political prisoners who have been sentenced in courts that are void of any standards for a court, until it cancels all files it has fabricated against protesting workers and teachers, and until it cancels the charge “assembly and collutions against national security” from the files of all worker activists.
Asqar Karimi
On behalf of the Worker-communist Party of Iran
1 June 2016
