2018-05-28

On May 10, 2018, following the call of the prohibited Coordination Council of Teachers’ Trade Unions, Iranian teachers held an assembly in front of the building of the Plan and Budget Organization in Tehran, as well as in more than thirty other cities and towns, to pursue their basic demands.

Teachers gathered across Iran:

– to protest the ruling class oppression,

– to protest their poor livelihood situation and their wages that are five times below the absolute poverty line

– to protest the poor quality of education in schools,

– to protest all forms of gender, class, and ethnic oppression,

– to protest repression, oppression and severe inequality in the educational system and institutions,

– to declare that teachers’ place should be in classrooms and not in prisons and torture rooms of the Islamic regime,

– to shout that their wages should be paid,

– to demand the Islamic government to stop militarizing schools, to provide free education, to do something about phenomena of drug addiction, child labor, child raping, street children and murdering of children,

– so that the ruling government does not undermine the rights of children to life and to equal education and not to deprive millions of children of education, happiness and life, and not to force them to join paramilitary forces,

– to demand the government to provide shelter for students instead of spending galactic sums of money for nuclear weapons, war and terrorism in other countries, to pay retired teachers’ pensions and stop using funds from teachers’ retirement pensions.

The regime’s response to teachers’ demands was the same as usual, especially in Tehran: brutal assault of the armed forces and this time the IRGC and its intelligence agency. They brutally beat up the teachers, especially the female teachers. According to Tehran Teachers’ Trade Association, in this unbridled attack, fifteen teachers, including Mohammad Taghi Fallahi, Secretary General of Tehran Teachers’ Association, Mohammad Habibi, Board Member, Rasool Bodaqi, the inspector of the Association, as well as Rahman Abedini, a member of the Board of Directors of Alborz Teachers Association, Ms. Alieh Eghdamdoust and Rouhollah Mardani, teachers’ activists, were arrested.

Some of the arrestees have been temporarily released on 50 million Toman bailouts, but Mohammad Habibi, a teacher who had been released few days ago on bail, is still in jail. These teachers, some of whom are retired now, while wounded, were handcuffed and transferred to the cars. Female teachers were also strongly insulted and pulled on street into the cars.

All these atrocities by the regime’s troops are committed to silence teachers’ voices. With the withdrawal of the US government from the nuclear deal or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Islamic state has intensified repression and oppression against women, workers and anyone who protests or criticizes in the society.

The Bureau of International Relations of the Communist Party of Iran supports teachers’ demands and struggles, as well as supports the statement of the Syndicate of Workers of the Tehran Bus Company and the Suburbs and the Workers’ Union of Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Industry, which condemn these crimes and announce support for teachers’ demands stating “Protesting, gathering and strike are people’s absolute rights. We strongly condemn beating and insulting of teachers and call for unconditional release of all the detainees and punishment of the those who have ordered and perpetrated crimes against the teachers”. Meanwhile, along with Iran’s working class, we ask all our class and international comrades as well as labor and socialist movements around the world to support the demands of Iranian teachers and retirees, demand the immediate and unconditional release of teachers and workers in a class and human solidarity and condemn the inhuman actions of the Islamic regime in Iran.

Bureau of International Relations of the Communist Party of Iran

28 May 2018