Iranian government officials arrested several labor activists across the country after banning independent May Day rallies and holding official celebrations.
Independent labor and union activists and organizations were planning to hold celebrations to commemorate the May Day, but their plans were foiled by the Islamic Republic’s security and intelligence organizations. Many prominent activists received calls from the Ministry of Intelligence asking them not to participate in independent May Day rallies.
Previously, on Ordibehesth 8 [April 27], hundreds of laborers and union activists were planning to hold a rally in Chitgar Park, located between Tehran and Karaj, which was disrupted by the police and security officers. The same incident was repeated on Thursday, Ordibehesh 12 [May 1], in Assaluyeh, where police officers prevented laborers and members of the Etehadiy-e Azad-e Kargaran [“Independent Labor Union”] to take part in the celebrations, according to a report by “Etehad” website, the union’s official platform.
According to this report, Javanmir Moradi and Taha Azadi, members of the union’s board of directors were arrested and transported to a police detention facility.
The only information available from the condition of two labor activists is that they have been transferred to a Ministry of Intelligence detention facility and are being interrogated. Meanwhile, another labor activist residing in Assuluyeh, Saeed Hazrati, also was arrested by the Ministry of Intelligence.
Three other members of the Etehadiy-e Azad-e Kargaran, Hamid Athari, Nasrin Mahmoudi Azar, and Aram Ebrahim Khas were arrested on Wednesday prior to the May Day rally in the city of Oshnaviye in Western Azerbaijan.
The news of the arrests have not been covered by major newspapers and media outlets or verified by government agencies.
According to the website “Dastranj,” affiliated with the labor movement, seven labor activists were arrested after May Day rallies in Sanandaj, capital of Kurdistan. They are Salah Zamani, a construction worker and member of the Center for Defense of Children’s Rights, Shiva Kheirabadi, Abdollah Najjar, Ghaleb Hosseini, Ali Hosseini, Bahaeddin Soddoghi, and Sousan Razani.
In this connection, Dastranj website reported that four of the arrested activists have been released on bail, but did not mention their names. There are no reports available on the status of other labor activists arrested in Kurdistan.
Rooz
one must not forget that one aspect of “security” cases is the image that they carry for the groups that advance such issues. Therefore, before fake charges take to the news-media and become public, those who have had a hand in arresting the students must be weakened. Otherwise, after the severe charges are made public, repeated and are tied to the image of the actors, even the intervention of the head of the judiciary (as history demonstrates) cannot be of much help to the detainees.
How can we tell the judiciary officials of Iran that according to law juveniles can stay alive and continue to live with appropriate and suitable punishment? How must one make this request from the judiciary a public and wide-spread demand and point out that killing a juvenile who has not wholeheartedly committed an act does not solve any of the real problems facing the country?
it is easy to predict that the success of student activists in imposing their will and demands on government officials at academic institutions, such as the Teachers Training college and Zanjan University (where the students boldly took the initiative into their own hands), would result in a backlash by extreme right-wing officials who would plan an “instructive” counter-attack against the student movement.Hopefully such a reaction will not come. But from an analytic perspective, one must not negate it altogether.
This is the reason that the moment imprisoned students step out of prison, it becomes clear to every one why they were put behind bars: for simply criticizing the president. It becomes instantly clear why they were subjected to interrogations and what questions were asked of them. These are the events that portray the image of this country. Students, social activists and journalists are certainly not on the list of those that dent this image. The publication of the arrest of students because of their criticism of the president brings forth a caricature image of Mahmud Ahmadinejad which does not match the claims that he made at Columbia University or the image that the regime strives to present about its standing.
There are at least 70 young people on death row who at the time of their arrest were under the age of 16. In the past 12 months, Iranian organisations claim that 80 feminists have been arrested and 20 of them have been sentenced from three to five years in jail. A total of 54 journalists have ended up in prison, several were released without trial after serving jail time, while others remain behind bars. In the past 12 months, 34 newspapers and magazines, among them the feminist magazine Zanan, have been shut down.
