Behnam Ebrahimzadeh’s speech
Happy May Day, International Workers’ Day
Greetings and congratulations on the International Workers’ Day to all workers, wage earners and toilers around the world, especially workers and my classmates in Iran.
As you know, last year was full of labor movements, movements and protests in many countries around the world. From the protest movements of the French workers to the protest movements in Iran. I will obviously begin my remarks with a brief report on the situation of Iranian workers over the past year.
Friends! The living and working conditions of the working class and all wage earners in Iran are very difficult and deplorable. We workers in Iran have been dragged into the catastrophe under the naked and violent capitalism of the Islamic Republic.
I am a worker who has been in the prisons of the Islamic Republic for many years for defending the rights of workers and working children.Now that I am talking to you, many of my class colleagues , such as Rasoul Badaghi and Ismail Gerami and Ismail Abdi and Shapoor Ehsani Rad … are in prison only for union activities. I take this opportunity as a member of Free Them Now, to call on all labor rights organizations in Iran and around the world, to demand the unconditional release of all labor activists and all political prisoners in Iran.
But also as a child rights activist, let me say a few words. In Iran and in the present century, we are still witnessing the death of children who die directly or indirectly in various ways due to poverty and misery. Children who die as a result of malnutrition, poverty and misery, or simply because they do not have a cell phone that can use the education system during the Covid19 period. Children who become victims and commit suicide because of poverty. Instead of having a happy childhood world and free education, children are forced to work from morning till night due to family poverty and insecurity. And the tragic part is the insecure lives of these children. They are raped, they find themselves in drug trafficking gangs, and when they get a little older, they end up in prison as thieves and traffickers. In Iran, we see the execution of children who are kept in prison long enough to legally carry out their criminal death sentences. On the other hand, child marriage is rampant and the government itself encourages it, and a shocking example of this was Mona Heydari, the married child and mother-child, who fell victim to a brutal honour killing.
I want to be the voice of these children and the voice of working children in this conference and on the International Workers’ Day.
But in the case of the labour movement, one exciting event about Iran is that today we have an active, front-line labor movement that is radical and demanding its rights. Despite all the repressions of the government, this movement has stood up and, with its protests, has brought forward leftist, radical and humane discourses.
Look at last year. Teachers, retirees, workers, nurses, project and contract workers, and formal and informal government workers in oil and farmers and various sections of society were in daily struggles. Teachers went on strike in more than 200 cities. And this is the society that is boiling with protest.
It is in this situation that we welcome May Day. This day belongs to all of us people who have lost our lives due to the savagery and barbarism of the ruling capitalism. In the end, I call on all workers around the world to stand united and stand together to fight right-wing and affiliated government organizations in the year ahead, on the eve of the ILO’s annual conference, and to prevent Islamic regime’s representatives from attending the conference. Let’s work globally. The Islamic regime must be expelled from ILO and all international institutions and become isolated in the world.
Long live May Day, the day of working class solidarity
