Islamic regime of Iran must be expelled from ILO! May15,2022
The annual conference of the ILO is ahead and we ask you to demand the expulsion of the representatives of the Islamic regime of Iran from ILO and this conference.
The regime in Iran has intensified its persecution of teachers and worker activists. Mass arrests and heavy jail sentences for labour activists in the past two years is a record. Teachers and workers are in prison for struggling for their basic rights and union activities. Many activists and protesters who are defending workers, teachers, and children’s rights are being sentenced to jail on the grounds of being “a threat to national security”, “disturbing the peace”, “assembly and collusion against the government”, “propaganda against the government” and “insulting the supreme leader”. Inside the prisons too, pressure on the workers and political activists is very high: deprivation of medication, shutting down the hot water, harassment and torture, keeping political prisoners in the same place as ordinary and dangerous prisoners, threats to their life – all are different aspects of the torture and pressure against the political prisoners.
An example of this is the murder of Baktash Abtin, a freedom-loving writer and poet, last year. Now, at the end of Hamid Nouri’s trial in Stockholm and Prosecutor’s request for life imprisonment for his participation in the torture nd murder of a hundreds of political prisoners in 1988 in Iran, the Islamic regime has set a deadline for the execution of Ahmad Reza Djalali a Swedish- Iranian dual national who has been taken captive in Iran since 2016. For the Islamic regime, the hostage-taking of dual-nationals is a means of ransom -taking and extortion in the international arena.
Currently, Eleven detainees from International Labor Day 2022 and 24 teachers, workers and worker’s rights activists, along with many other political prisoners are in prions. .
ILO,s protocols 87 and 98 are about the freedom of organization and collective agreement, but, not only are workers in Iran deprived of the right to organize, but they are also arrested and imprisoned if they attempt to organize. Protocols 138 and 182 are about prohibition of child labour. In Iran hundreds of thousands children are working in very insecure, unsafe and dangerous situation.
The so called “workers’ house”, which participates in ILO under the name of “representative of workers in Iran”, is indeed an extremely hated state run organisation among the workers. It has played a direct role in murder and suppression of workers, and is among the criminal elements of Islamic regime. To attempt to organize workers in Iran, independently from the government, is regarded a crime and is usually punished with long term jail sentences.
However, despite all this, we see no action by ILO regarding this situation, and in defence of the workers in Iran. Our main question is why ILO is silent about these kind of anti labour policies and apparent aggressions against workers in a country like Iran?
Such a regime which has a world record in repression and crime, such a regime which arrests, jails and flogs workers, should have no place in ILO, but in international courts to face charges for its crimes against humanity. This regime should be expelled from ILO and from all the international bodies, just as the regime of racial Apartheid of South Africa faced international boycott and isolation, last century. Especially an organisation like ILO that bears the name of the workers, should not tolerate among its members an anti-workers’ tyranny.
We ask you union activists to:
• Protest the attendance of the Islamic regime of Iran at the ILO conference!
• Boycott the Islamic regime of Iran’s delegation!
• Call for the release of all jailed workers and teachers and all political prisoners in Iran!
• Demand the expulsion of the Islamic regime of Iran from ILO!
Free Them Now! Campaign to Free Jailed Workers in Iran
Spokesperson: Shahla.Daneshfar2@gmail.com,