The foundation of the Islamic Republic is based on executions and repression of workers and the people. This regime has a long record of executing children, organizing and supporting terrorism on an international scale, and committing horrific crimes against humanity. Below are some of the cases:
1- Last week Rafiq Doust, the first Minister of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and the former head of the state institution “Bonyad Mostazafan,” recently admitted in an interview with a state television channel that he led teams responsible for carrying out targeted assassinations of prominent opponents of the Islamic Republic in foreign countries. These included Shapour Bakhtiar, Gholam-Ali Oveissi, Shahriar Shafiq, and Fereydoun Farrokhzad in France and Germany. He confessed that he used large sums of money to hire Basque and international criminals to assassinate regime opponents abroad. The number of dissidents assassinated by the Islamic regime outside Iran reaches into the hundreds, including Gholam Keshavarz, Sadegh Sharafkandi, Kazem Rajavi, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, Sediq Kamangar, Abdul Rahman Boroumand, and Homayoun Ardalan.
In response to the criminal confessions of Mohsen Rafiqdoust, 34 organizations and networks of the Islamic Republic’s opposition abroad, including Free Them Now have called for immediate action to be taken against the Islamic Republic’s state terrorism on a global scale.
2- Following the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising, the Islamic Republic intensified its repression and executions. According to reports, the regime has killed more than 500 people, including 60 children, while arresting tens of thousands and blinding hundreds with direct gunfire to one or both eyes.
The Fact Finding Committee of the United Nations in its report accused the officials of the Islamic Republic of committing serious human rights violations during and after the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests, including murder, imprisonment, torture, rape, enforced disappearances, and sexual violence, which are classified as crimes against humanity
3- Reports indicate that at least 975 people were executed in Iran last year, marking a 17% increase compared to 834 executions the year before.
4- In September 2022, the Islamic regime killed Mahsa Amini simply for her hijab. Outraged by this brutal murder, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets with all the anger accumulated over 44 years of terror, plunder, systematic crimes, and oppression, launching the “Women, Life, Freedom” revolution.
5- On November 28, 2023, the Islamic regime attacked and killed 17-year-old Armita Geravand for not wearing the Islamic hijab.
6- The crimes of the Islamic Republic are numerous and vast. The regime violates workers’ most fundamental rights, executes children, legalizes child marriage as a means to rape young girls, and arrests thousands for drinking alcohol, failing to obey Islamic dress codes, breaking fast during Ramadan, and other so-called offenses.
7- The Islamic Republic completely disregards ILO conventions regarding the right to strike, protest, assemble, and engage in collective bargaining. Workers must fight for each of these rights.
8- During the brutal crackdown on the November 2019 uprising, more than 7,000 men, women, and children were arrested, and 1,500 people were killed. On September 2, 2020, Amnesty International published a shocking report titled “the trampling of humanity continues in Iran” detailing the arrests, torture, forced confessions, enforced disappearances, and sexual assaults inflicted on detainees.
9- Additionally, prisoners are subjected to “silent executions” through the denial of medical treatment or forced administration of psychiatric drugs. These are clear and shocking examples of the Islamic Republic’s crimes in Iran.
10- In June 2024, Amnesty International stated that gender apartheid should be recognized under international law as a crime to strengthen efforts against regimes that systematically impose gender-based discrimination. This statement reflects the global impact of the “Women, Life, Freedom” revolution.
11- In the summer of 1988, during the months of August and September, following the end of the Iran-Iraq war, Khomeini ordered the formation of a “Death Commission” that executed thousands of political prisoners—many of whom had already served their sentences and should have been released. Opposition groups have documented the names of around 5,000 victims, but the actual number is believed to be much higher.
12- Moreover, the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane with 176 passengers in January 2020, the killing of 1,500 protesters in the 2019 uprising, the execution and rape of children—each of these alone is sufficient reason to demand the Islamic Republic’s expulsion from the International Labour Organization and all global institutions, as well as its complete international boycott.
13- Currently, over 35 prominent workers and teachers, along with many other political prisoners, are incarcerated. Others have been sentenced to prison and could be summoned at any moment to serve their sentences. These activists and their families are in an extremely precarious financial situation.
Looking at this list of crimes provides only a glimpse into the atrocities of the Islamic Republic. But each of these cases is enough to justify boycotting such a regime. The people of Iran demand the full boycott of the Islamic Republic for all its crimes and the prosecution of every member of its leadership.
Free Them Now campaign for the release of jailed workers has, for years, been leading efforts to expel this criminal and gender-apartheid regime from the ILO. The least defence of workers and the labor movement requires that all unions support the campaign to expel the representatives of the anti-worker anti human Islamic regime from the ILO. Just as Nazi Germany’s representatives were expelled from the ILO in the 1930s, just as the Islamic regime was expelled from the UN Commission on the Status of Women, and just as apartheid South Africa was globally boycotted and expelled from all international bodies—the gender apartheid regime of Iran must also be expelled from the ILO today.
We call on all labor unions and humanitarian organizations worldwide to join us in supporting the expulsion of this regime and all its representatives from the ILO ahead of its annual conference.
To date, several trade unions and well-known international political figures have endorsed this campaign and supported the expulsion of the Islamic regime from the ILO.
shahla.daneshfar2@gmail.com
Kazem Nik-khah kazemnikkhah@gmail.com