Statement in connection with the current critical situation in Iran

“Council for organizing protests of oil contract workers”

For more than a hundred days, we have been fighting a hard battle to defend our lives, livelihoods, and human dignity. The murder of Mehsa Amini ignited the anger and hatred of our people. We came to the streets in defense of our lost lives and our human dignity, but they answered us with bullets and prison.

Prisons are full of young people who are the heart of our people. In the same period, about 600 people were killed on the streets or tortured to death in prison. Many of these are young people, teenagers and even a ten-year-old child like Kianpour Falak. Repressive forces are scattered in the cities and patrolling the streets. In addition, tens of thousands of people have been arrested during this period, and the government has treated those arrested as prisoners of war, and has brought torture, rape, and the silent death of prisoners to its highest level, and is issuing more and more death sentences every day.

For example, since the 17th of December, four protesting workers named Mohsen Shekari, Majid Reza Rahnavard, Mohammad Mahdi Karmi and Mohammad Hosseini were executed. We emphasized that the answer to these executions and repressions is the spread of nationwide protests and strikes. Beside these repressions, the livelihoods of our workers and people are more and more plundered and the poverty line has reached 30 million, and the dimensions of poverty, hunger, lack of housing, and displacement are catastrophic.

We workers have been pushed to rebellion from living below the poverty line and insecurity, minimal increase in wages in the face of rapid rise in inflation, running every day after unpaid wages and road closures by bullying freeloading contractors and finally pulling the body of our colleague out of the smelting ovens. We have come to rebellion and this situation is no longer sustainable for anyone. Livelihood, dignity, our inalienable right.

Mahsa Amini, this young girl who had a thousand dreams, was arrested and killed just because of the hijab. Many women have lost their lives due to this charge or their lives have been put in danger. They have been imprisoned and are currently in detention. All this oppression, discrimination and crime against women must be ended and these are all the common pains of us people who came to the streets and shouted all our pains and slogans of women, life, freedom and this is a movement that will not stop.

We are not slaves to witness the exercise of power and will from above on our work and on our character and way of life every day. We want true freedom, prosperity and comfort.

The way to get rid of this situation is unity and solidarity and unification of all of our people.

The time has come for all of us workers, teachers, retirees, youth, students, women’s, children’s and LGBTs rights defenders, environmental defenders and all spectrums who have had it with this regime to form a united line of protest. Let’s build a strong front by uniting around a series of urgent demands for the next steps and final victory.

In connection with the current serious situation, the coordination council for the organization of protests of oil contract workers emphasizes the urgent demands stated here.

The organizing council expects oil workers and all workers, teachers, retirees, students, women’s rights defenders, child rights defenders to declare their support for these demands and form a united and solidarity based on the slogan of women, life, freedom and join us.

1- “Freedom, freedom, freedom” is our motto, and we demand the immediate and unconditional release of all detainees, all people who are in prison for their beliefs and protests, and an end to security cases against opponents and protesters under the headings of war on God, disruption of order and security of the society and such accusations.

2- “Woman’s life of freedom” means ending reactionary “execution” orders, without any reason. All death sentences must be immediately and immediately revoked. And as we wrote and shouted elsewhere, the execution is an intentional murder by the government, and no human being should be executed for any reason. We want the complete abolition of the death penalty.

3- We want to end any oppression and humiliation and discrimination against women and gender apartheid in the society. In addition, we are for separation of religion from the government and the administration of society. In our opinion, the designation of official religion is a form of dictatorial action on the society and we have well experienced its disadvantages. Humans can have any kind of religion or no religion at all, and recognizing this principle is an important condition for freedom of opinion and expression in society.

4- Freedom of protest, assembly, strike, demonstration and unconditional freedom of speech and thought are the basic rights of our people and should be recognized unconditionally. The securitization of struggles and the phenomenon of political crimes and political prisoners should be ended.

5- “Kurd, Baloch, Azari, freedom, equality” is our protest slogan against discrimination and inequality and any ethnic division. We want to recognize equal rights for all citizens of the country regardless of their belief and religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and the elimination of any civil, economic and class discrimination and inequality.

6- We do not accept any kind of power from above either in work or in life. Our desire is the council and collective management of society. Declaring these minimum demands is the first step to exercise the collective will of our people to unite and shape our destiny and future. Join the alliance around the demands announced in this statement and join us.

Our emphasis is still on nationwide strikes.

Council for organizing protests of oil contract workers

21 January 1401

#Protests_nationwide

# Nationwide_strikes

FTN: Taken from the Telegram channel of the “Council for organizing protests of oil contract workers”