Workers and women in Iran continue to protest for their rights and freedoms. Workers in sectors such as oil, steel, and elsewhere have struck for better pay and improved conditions; women have continued to resist the Islamic Republic’s repression.
The regime has responded with yet more repression and has stepped up executions and attacks on women. Rapper and singer Toomaj Salehi is among those who have been sentenced to death for supporting protests. Moreover, dozens of trade union activists have been arrested, and many jailed. Women’s rights activists have also faced detention, and female students have been poisoned in schools. The regime is now attempting to use the threat of attacks from Israel, and their own warmongering response, to whip up nationalist sentiment to distract from the conditions faced by the Iranian people. A regional war will only serve the reactionary agenda of Israel and Iran’s rulers.
The Iranian regime is a capitalist neoliberal regime that uses execution and state terror to maintain its power and spends the wealth produced by workers to support regional proxies and destructive wars. Iran’s ruling class practises patronage and embezzlement and enriches itself via capitalist enterprises while workers and the poor in Iran face sharply declining living standards.
On International Workers’ Day, 2024, we will march as a contingent on the London May Day march to express our solidarity with workers and women in Iran. The rights we fight for – liberty, equality, and workers’ democracy – must be universal, or they are meaningless.
As well as jailing trade unionists and attacking labour activists, the Islamic regime of Iran violates numerous workers’ rights, including:
- The right to establish and join independent unions
- The right to bargain collectively
- The right to strike
Join us on May Day to say:
- Solidarity with workers, women and youth in Iran
- No to compulsory hijab laws and sexual apartheid; for women’s rights in Iran
- No to regional war
- Capital punishment is state murder: no to executions
- Free jailed trade unionists and political prisoners
- Expose the representatives of the anti-worker Iranian regime at the International Labour Organisation
- For freedom, democracy, and equality for all: for international socialism.
This contingent has been initiated by the Committee for Solidarity with the Iranian Workers’ Movement (SWIW). We welcome co-sponsorship from any network or organisation committed to solidarity with Iranian workers’ struggles.
Meet us in Clerkenwell Green at 12:00 on Wednesday May 1st – Look out for the SWIW banner.
Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/taymazvalley/52383779726. Author: Taymaz Valley. Licence: CC BY 2.0 DEED Attribution 2.0 Generic
Source >> LabourHub
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