Iran's war on trade Union
By Peter Tatchell
August 18, 2008

The Guardian (UK)
The anti-worker dictatorship in Iran has stepped up its attacks on labour activists, with a new wave of arrests and jailings.
Among those recently jailed were two workers' rights campaigners, Sousan Razani and Shiva Kheirabadi. They have been sentenced to 15 lashes and four months in prison for the "crime" (under Iran's Islamic law) of participating in a May Day celebration in the city of Sanandaj earlier this year. The verdicts were issued by the criminal court of Sanandaj – branch 101.
On the same charges the same court sentenced Abdullah Khani to 91 days in prison and 40 lashes and Seyed Qaleb Hosseini to six months and 50 lashes.
In addition, Khaled Hosseini, a worker activist, was given a 91 day suspended sentence and 30 lashes because of his efforts to support the trade union leader, Mahmoud Salehi, who was imprisoned at the time and was being denied medical treatment. The charges against him include "disturbing public order and agitation."
Meanwhile, Mansour Osanloo, leader of Tehran's bus workers syndicate, remains in jail since he was sentenced to five years in July 2007 for his union activities.
Nine of his union members have recently had their dismissal from their jobs upheld by the Islamic courts, which do not recognise trade unions or workers rights. The sacked men were all bus drivers, who had suffered two years of harassment and victimisation for the "crime" of establishing a free and independent trade union.
Another labour activist, Afshin Shams, was arrested in July 2008. He is a member of the coordinating committee to help form workers' organisations, and a member of the committee in defence of Mahmoud Salehi.
These arrests and jailings coincide with a wave of strikes and demonstrations against profiteering, corruption and shady business dealings by the country's political and religious elite, as reported in the Guardian last month. Many of the strikes are in response to President Ahmadinejad's collusion with employers who are pushing through redundancies, withholding pay and forcing down wages.
Workers at the Alborz tire manufacturing company are owed two to five months pay. At the Shahryar Dam in Mianeh, the staff have not been paid for four months. More than 40 workers of Mahloran company in Borujerd city have been unpaid for seven months. Last week, employees at the Sanandaj textile company were violently attacked when they held a rally in Farvardin Square in protest at the sudden shutdown of plant operations and mass lay-offs.
Workers at the Haft Tapeh sugar cane company, which employs more than 5,000, have been on strike too. The last time they took industrial action, they won three months of unpaid wages.
The strikers have been buoyed by the success of the Khodro car workers who walked out in June to demand wage increases and an end to mandatory overtime – and won.
The Tehran regime is increasingly hostile to rising working-class militancy, which it fears could become political and turn into a mass movement against the government. The ruling elite are particularly nervous of the possibility that the unions might link up with students, leftwingers, civic organisations and oppressed national minorities (like the Arabs, Kurds and Baluchs) to form a united front for a free and democratic federal state.
Tehran's crackdown on union activists is, in fact, part of a broader assault (pdf) on civil society and campaign groups, as the rightwing Islamist regime in Tehran seeks to stifle dissent and tighten its grip on power. This repression includes a rise in death sentences on opposition activists. In Baluchistan, an estimated 700 nationalist and human rights campaigners are on death row.
Even small, peaceful and lawful protests by women are violently suppressed, which is more evidence of the regime's insecurity and tyranny.
The persecution of Kurdish Iranians is typical. On July 20 2008, Farzad Kamangar was sentenced to death in a seven minute show trial, in which three minutes were taken up by the prosecutor reading the allegations and the defence was given a mere four minutes to state its case. Kamangar's lawyer was never notified prior to the trial of the offence with which his client was charged.
Kamangar, a young teacher, was originally incarcerated on 18 August 2006. He was tortured over allegations (probably trumped up) of collaborating with the Pejak party, being a member of Kurdistan Workers party (PKK), transporting explosives and various other doubtful accusations. Since then, he has been transferred from one jail to another, from one city to another and from one judicial and security jurisdiction to another. The government has ignored all Iranian and international pleas for clemency.
Thirty people were executed on 27 July 2008 in Tehran. Saeed Mortazavi, the attorney general, denounced them as "drug dealers, murders and insurgents". A confidential source inside the public prosecutor's office reported that some of them were people who had participated in the mass protests against gas price increases last year. "The execution of these people is in accordance with the new regulations called the social security enhancement plan", Saeed Mortazavi is reported to have said. This plan is the regime's hardline strategy to crush criticism, dissent and protest.
Mohammad Mostafaee, a defence lawyer, seemed to cast doubt on official claims about the crimes of the executed men. He told Deutsche Welle:
My understanding is that these so-called insurgents are special people. The date of their execution is not a routine practice. Normally, every last Wednesday of each month, the Tehran criminal prosecutor's office carries out the executions, but in this case they will be executed on Sunday. These are people who have had their trial in either Enghelab Islami (Islamic Revolutionary) courts or in the special crimes' courts.
This explanation implies that at least some of those who were executed were probably not common criminals, but deemed to be more serious and threatening political protesters.
While the people of Iran, including oppositionists, do not want a western military attack on their country, growing numbers do want democracy, human rights, social justice, trade union rights and an end to Tehran's neocolonial subjugation of ethnic minority peoples.
You can support Iran's heroic trade union activists by signing this petition and by supporting the International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran. You can also show your solidarity with the Iranian people by joining the Hands Off The People Of Iran, which campaigns both against a military attack on Iran and against Tehran's neoliberal despotism.
Together, we can all do something to help our beleaguered sisters and brothers in Iran. Like us, they want freedom and equality. And they deserve it too.

Tehran's Web of silence
By Elham Gheytanchi and Babak Rahimi
August 24, 2008

The Boston Globe

AS TEHRAN'S nuclear crisis grabs headlines, an ominous development is taking place inside Iran: the escalation of state repression against Iranian dissidents online. The hard-liner administration of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stepped up the arrest of political dissidents, who have used the Internet as an alternative medium to express their views against the Islamic Republic.
Coupled with their suspicion of the international community and continued attachment to a dogmatic vision of an Islamist society, the recent developments raise concern over the extent to which hard-liners are determined to muzzle dissent in cyberspace, thereby advancing their sphere of influence over Iranian civil society - especially over women's rights and human rights groups that have suffered the most in the latest attacks.
Among the many dissidents detained by the regime are prominent students and women's rights activists like Mohammad Hashemi and Bahareh Hedayat, whose websites were shut down in July for allegedly propagating "immoral activities" online and receiving support from organizations opposing the regime based outside of Iran. The two are accused of acting against "national security" and "insulting public sanctities."
The July arrests came at the same time as the disturbing news that the hard-liner dominated Iranian parliament has plans to toughen some of the press laws to restrict blogging by dissenters. Bloggers who express anti-regime views would be vulnerable to being labeled as enemies of God on earth - a crime punishable by death. If passed by parliament, the measure would unleash the most repressive law adopted by the Islamic Republic.
Iran now employs the highest level of Internet filtering and surveillance in the world. Citizens are prohibited to access websites ranging from academic and social-networking sites to erotic poetry and computer technology - and especially websites that relate to anti-filtering programs. Politically dissenting sites are subject to regular blocks, while sites devoted to human rights and ethnic minorities are filtered for fear of undermining the existing religious ideology of the government.
In recent months, there has been talk of easing relations with the United States, and even the establishment of a US interests section in Tehran for the first time since 1979. Yet as that news spread, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, pursued activists through Kayhan, the newspaper he directly controls. Among the first targets of Kayhan's infamous accusations were two Kurdish activists who were seeking support for the One Million Signature Campaign, a nonviolent initiative against laws that discriminate against women. The newspaper accused Ronak Safarzadeh and Hana Abdi of engaging in threats to national security and of taking up arms against the state on behalf of the Kurdish movement - a capital offense.
The charges were false. Both are young activists - in their early 20s - committed to a nonviolent grass-roots movement that has started two years ago by women's rights activists first in Tehran and later active in 16 provinces around the country as well as among Iranian diasporas in Germany, the United States, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. The simple act of gathering signatures has been defined by the Iranian authorities as "threat to national security." Some of the activists are spotted and detained by Ahmadinejad's newly appointed police guards, so-called social security guards in public places such as parks, buses, and in the streets.
The recent wave of arrests and accusations bring back the chilling memory of the massacre of political prisoners in 1988, when, a few months after then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini himself was about to sign the UN Security Council resolution that ended the eight year war between Iran and Iraq, he ordered the massive killings of more than 3,000 political prisoners.
Many of the clergy objected, but the supreme leader was undeterred. Apparently, he thought such a brutal act was needed, while Iran was negotiating with the West, to demonstrate that Islamic Republic was strong. Could it be that today's supreme leader is thinking the same thing? As the Islamic Republic of Iran is entering direct negotiations with the Great Satan, the authorities deem it necessary to suppress internal dissent to show that the regime is stronger than ever.
 

Two Crimes Against Humanity, One Perpetrator
By  Jila Kazerounian, Executive Director of WFAFI

August 26, 2008

Middle East Times

Twenty years ago in the summer of 1988 the clerical regime in Iran committed one of the most horrific massacres in history. In an edict Ayatollah Khomeini ordered: "Those who are in prisons throughout the country and remain steadfast in their support for the Monafeqin [Mojahedin], are waging war on God and are condemned to execution.... Annihilate the enemies of Islam immediately. As regards the cases, use whichever criterion that speeds up the implementation of the [execution] verdict."
Right after this fatwa the mock summary trials leading to executions began in prisons across Iran. A committee of three people called the "committee of death" by the political prisoners was in charge of enforcing this edict. In speedy two- to three-minute "trials," the political prisoners were asked about their ideological beliefs.
If the committee sensed the slightest indication that the prisoner was still supporting the opposition groups, specifically the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), s/he was sent for execution. Within a few months, thousands of men and women of all ages were hanged and their bodies moved outside via trucks to be buried in mass graves. Those who escaped this bloodbath revealed the shocking stories later.
For the past 20 years, the theocratic regime has kept silent about the slaughter of 1988, unquestionably crimes against humanity. None of the leaders of the Iranian regime have mentioned, let alone condemned this brutal violence against the innocent political prisoners. Ayatollah Montazeri, who was earmarked to follow Khomeini, was the only one in the ruling circle who revealed the mass executions of 1988 in his book along with Khomeini's hand-written fatwa. At the time Montazeri was Khomeini's deputy. Montazeri was immediately dismissed and put under house arrest. Even the so-called reformists have never exposed this bloodbath either. In fact many of them were active or silent partners to this crime.
Amnesty International has declared Sept. 1 as "a day to remembrance of the victims of political violence including political prisoners, prisoners of conscience and all other victims of human rights abuses whom we, and humanity as a whole, have failed to rescue because they were executed, massacred, murdered, or kidnapped and killed…." Amnesty International has also renewed calls to hold accountable and bring to justice all those responsible for this crime.
Another crime of the same proportion is about to happen by the mullah's regime and their proxies in Iraq. Members of Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) in Ashraf city who have resided in Iraq for more than 20 years hold the refugee status issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Since 2004, the MEK members have enjoyed the "protected persons" status under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Their compound has been protected by the coalition forces in Iraq. They are very popular among the Iraqis. In June, some 3 million Iraqi Shiites signed a declaration supporting MEK and demanding an end to the Iranian regime's meddling in Iraqi affairs. As opposed to the Iranian regime that has brought death and destruction to Iraqi citizens, residents of Ashraf have worked closely with them on mutual interests and projects. Women of Ashraf are considered role models by Iraqi women. They have taught them to stand up to Islamic fundamentalism and extremism. They have demonstrated that achieving equality between men and women is no longer a myth among Muslims and political leadership of women is attainable.
As a result of all their success, the Iranian regime is exerting a lot of pressure on the Iraqi government to obtain the security of Ashraf from the coalition forces. In other words, to hand over Ashraf to the proxies of the Iranian regime! This action will undoubtedly result in another massacre of large magnitude.
The regime in Iran has no shame of killing its opponents. The history of their past 30 years is a testimony to this fact. Tens of thousands of political prisoners from teenage girls and boys to grandparents in their 70s have been tortured and executed by the mullahs. The transfer of protection of Ashraf is against the rights of refugees and the principles of the Geneva Convention.
The world did not and has not recognized the extent of the 1988 massacre by the Islamic fundamentalist government of Iran. It is never too late to bring the perpetrators to justice. The Nazis who committed crimes are still being hunted and tried in international courts. Instead, the world has chosen to "engage" and appease the murderers of Iranian people.
The crime of 1988 happened behind closed doors and in secret. The executors have concealed it for years. The massacre that could happen in 2008 can and must be prevented. If anything happens to the unarmed refugees of Ashraf, the conscience of the world will be held responsible.
As we honor all of those who were so unfairly massacred by the vicious mullahs, we have a responsibility to protect all the thousands who could become their potential victims. Handing over the protection of Ashraf from the coalition forces to the Iraqis must be stopped.
 

Iran's human side depicted by artist

By Ana Sami

August 28, 2008

Denver Post

The Democratic National Convention in Denver brought with it a plethora of activity, including booths supporting various political and social causes and demonstrators who also voiced their opinions at Civic Center Park.
Undoubtedly the most eye catching of all presentations was a mosque-like structure made out of synthetic silk with pictures held up by massive steel beams, a sound system that played street sounds from Iran including the azan (Islamic call to prayer), and lights to be lit at sundown.
The inside and outside of the structure boldly displays large photographs printed on sturdy weather resistant fabric of Iranians living in Iran, including an Iranian cleric, a young bassiji (Iran's internal paramilitary forced charged to maintain public order through suppression), and many photos of young women with their headscarves pushed back.
The artist, and the name behind this project called "Pictures of You," Tom Loughlin, states that the purpose of this project is to show Iran's human side, to allow the American public to see that "we are all made from the same flesh."
From the outset, many Americans and others who viewed the display were appreciative of the art, and received the message of "peace" and no "war" well.
However, those who are more familiar with the reality on the ground in Iran, were outraged, not by the images which were pleasing to the eye, but to the deeper political message that Loughlin admitted was "inevitable."
If Loughlin admits there is a political message involved, it is necessary to dissect the message that Loughlin whether purposely or unintentionally has promoted.
Throughout the past thirty years since they gained power, and especially since the Khatami administration (1997-2005), the Iranian regime has made their best attempts to promote an image of Iran that is falsified and only attempts to mask the worst of crimes committed against the Iranian people, and now sadly the people of the region.
The laundry list of Iran's crimes against humanity include the execution of minors, the hanging of individuals under the pretext of being criminals (often in mass number, without fair trials), the stoning of women and men to death, the gouging out of eyes, the severing of fingers, the rape and sexual assault of very young girls and women by Iranian officials, the physical oppression and torture of Iran's vibrant youth who protest, and of course violent terrorist acts abroad which has been responsible for the death of Americans, and so many other innocent individuals.
In addition the majority of Iran's population lives in abject poverty because of the massive amounts of money dedicated to developing their nuclear program-Iranians starve to feed the ego and political prowess of their unwanted ruling regime.
One can only wonder if Loughlin ever passed Evin prison in Tehran, the notorious torture chambers where heart stopping crimes are committed, and where Zahra Kazemi was brutally tortured, sexually assaulted by Iranian regime officials, and murdered by a blow to the head.
Kazemi was a photographer as well, but felt the need to show the truth, images of Evin, and the brokenhearted yet steadfast families who were there to protest the abuse of their families and friends.
Yes, Iran and their people are beautiful, and try as they might, the Iranian regime will fail time and time again to obliterate their spirit and resolve to free their country.
If an image is worth a thousand words, then images of Iran's people, resisting tyranny and oppression, deserve to be photographed, displayed, and lauded.
Loughlin's unbalanced view of the reality of the Iranian people undoubtedly plays directly into the hands of Iran's ruling elite, the message that Iranians are well, happy, and carefree are superficial and promote the Iranian regime's agenda to convince world leaders to use "diplomacy" and not violence as a means to deal with them.
The Iranian regime knows all too well, and recent US diplomatic history has shown that diplomacy and its potential results of appeasement are simply a ploy to buy time and continue their expansion of suppression.
Loughlin and those that fund his rather expensive projects have a responsibility to understand the message of their art, while attractive, only encourages Tehran's hideous and oppressive nature.
At the very least, Loughlin has an obligation to show all sides of Iran's social structure. The truth of the matter is that Iranians, because of their serious situation in the world spotlight, are infused with politics and burning to tell the world the horrific crimes they have witnessed throughout the years. Of course, the fear in speaking out and documenting such things is ever-present.
On at least one occasion, Loughlin traveled to Iran with an outspoken anti-war advocate, Iranian-American Deena Guzder, who just received her advanced degree from Columbia University.
Interestingly enough, Guzder was a member of a student organization called CCAW (The Columbia Coalition Against the War) who according to the AdHoc Columbia University newspaper, "generally supported Ahmadinejad's invitation, some on free speech grounds, and others as a move towards dialogue rather than war with Iran."
While war is not the solution to the Iran crisis, the failed policy of diplomacy isn't either. The only solution is to listen to the Iranian people, and to support and allow them to take back the control that they deserve, but never had.
Loughlin acknowledged that he would rather his message bear a more "connective" nature rather than "divisive." But what he has failed thus far to realize is that he has alienated the deep wishes and dreams of Iranians; to free their country and end the nightmare that has become their lives.
Indeed, human beings are all made from the same flesh, but we are all also sustained by the same blood; one should ask why the Iranian regime chooses to spill the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. The most genuine bond any human being can have with the Iranian people, is to remember and speak of those that have paid so dearly for their ideals.
Iranians and others should remember Atefeh Rajabi, who was hanged at 16 by an Iranian judge/cleric, for "crimes against chastity," while she was being raped by a former Iranian prison guard four times her age.
People can connect with Rajabi and thousands of others by honoring and pondering their most intimate wishes and unwavering faith.
Their desire for liberty and justice shine bright, especially in those last few moments of their lives. Before the noose was tightened or the bullet bore, these fearless individuals show us an image far greater than a photo can fully capture, that of the unbreakable quality of a true human spirit.