Iran targets trade unionists as defiance grows

On May Day, in Sanandaj, Kordestan Province, north-west Iran, scores of workers — men and women — gathered and chanted, “We are workers; we are hungry.” Security forces quickly arrived and dispersed the crowd. At least eight workers were arrested, their fate unknown.

While trade unionists around the world gathered and marched on the streets, in Iran workers were denied permits to hold rallies in public in cities across the country on May 1. In Tehran, workers had to gather in a gymnasium.

The pathological fear of the reactionary, authoritarian Iranian regime of independent trade unionism is nowhere more viciously demonstrated than in the treatment of Reza Shahabi, the treasurer of the Union of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company.

He has been detained in Evin Prison in Tehran, since June 2010 and given a six-year jail sentence on vague charges. He is in poor health after numerous hunger strikes and it is doubtful whether he is receiving all necessary medical treatment.

Reza Shahabi has also been fined 70 million rial ($5,700) and banned from all trade union activities for five years. According to his lawyer, the prosecution is seeking to bring a fresh charge of “enmity against God” for alleged contact with the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), a banned opposition group.

The Tehran bus union was banned after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Workers resumed the union's activities in 2004, although it is not legally recognised. In December 2005, police arrested 12 of the union’s leaders at their homes. Other members were arrested on 25 December 2005 after they went on strike to call for the release of their colleagues. Hundreds more were arrested during a further strike.

The deputy head of the union, Ebrahim Madadi, was released from Evin Prison only last month after completing a three-and-a-half-year sentence for his alleged activities “against national security”.

Amnesty International believes that Reza Shahabi has been convicted solely for his peaceful trade union work, and has adopted him as a prisoner of conscience. The Trades Union Congress in Britain is backing an international campaign for his release.

Other trade unionists have been arrested or harassed recently in Iran. On or about 24 April 2012, trade unionist Zabihollah Bagheri was arrested on his way out of the Moharakeh Steel Plant in Esfahan, central Iran, by three plain-clothed officials. His current whereabouts are unknown.

Members of the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Company (HTSCC) union, which is also not recognised by the government, have come under attack. Rasoul Bodaghi, a member of the Tehran Teachers’ Trade Association, arrested in September 2009, is serving six years in prison for “spreading propaganda against the system” and “gathering and colluding against national security”.  

The background to the repression is a deteriorating economy. Sanctions have taken their toll but the moves to end subsidies on fuel and food that began last year have led to soaring inflation and mounting anger on the streets.

Earlier this month, an Iranian parliamentary committee rejected the second phase of the subsidy “reform” programme which requires massive cuts in public spending (sounds familiar).

Prices have spiralled since the subsidies were first reduced, causing serious financial problems for millions of people across the country. The price of petrol has risen three-fold and the cost of gas has soared by 500%. The value of Iran’s currency, the rial, has declined steeply, the employment rate is about 15% and inflation is running at nearly 20%, with food price inflation exceeding 50%.  

Activists inside Iran believe a long, hot summer of resistance is on the cards as resistance mounts across the country.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Bahrain F1 race like a circuit of death

As the Formula 1 Grand Prix teams begin arriving in Bahrain for this weekend’s race, let’s hope they are not too disturbed by the fact that human rights activist Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja is near to death as he continues his hunger strike.

Or that hundreds of protesters are still in prison after being detained, tried unfairly by military courts, and receiving harsh prison sentences, according to Amnesty International’s new report. Or that dozens have been imprisoned for life in the brutal crackdown that followed the uprising against the ruling Al Khalifa family in February and March 2011.

That led to the cancellation of last year’s Grand Prix. But Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone has decreed that this year’s race must go ahead, lending succour to a regime that is truly despised by the majority of the population.

The defiance continues amid state violence, despite bringing in former Scotland Yard commissioner John Yates to tart up the image of the country’s police force. Yates quit the Met, you will remember, in the wake of the News of the World hacking scandal last summer. He recently wrote to Formula 1’s governing body president Jean Todt saying he feels safer living in Bahrain “than I have often felt in London”. No comment.


Amnesty pours cold water on Bahrain’s attempt to create a new image for itself with a series of “reforms”. The organisation’s report published today concludes:

Reforms have been piecemeal, perhaps aiming to appease Bahrain’s international partners, and have failed to provide real accountability and justice for the victims. Human rights violations are continuing unabated. The government is refusing to release scores of prisoners who are incarcerated because they called for meaningful political reforms, and is failing to address the Shi’a majority’s deeply-seated sense of discrimination and political marginalization, which has exacerbated sectarian divides in the country.

Prisoners still in jail include 14 leading opposition figures and a prominent trade unionist. Among them is al-Khawaja, who has been on hunger strike for almost 70 days in protest at his imprisonment. Immediately after his arrest in April last year, al-Khawaja’s jaw was broken and required major surgery.

In hospital he was blindfolded the whole time and handcuffed to the bed. Discharged against the recommendations of his doctor, al-Khawaja was placed in solitary confinement and has been beaten, suffered sexual assault and other torture.

Amnesty reports that the country’s the security forces remain unaffected by “institutional changes” introduced by the government. Several people have died in recent months as a result of what is described as the “reckless use of tear gas”. The number of deaths had reached at least 60 by April 2012.

That the F1 race is going ahead is in no small part the result of the work done by PR consultants to “correct inaccurate reporting”. At the heart of the operation is David Cracknell, former political editor of the Sunday Times and whose Big Tent Communications is current PR consultant for the government of Bahrain

Matt Hardigree, writing for the auto website Jalopnik, says that a series of emails from Cracknell have sought to convey the image of a peaceful Bahrain and that the F1 race should go ahead.

The e-mails sent to me — and other motoring journalists — are filled with statements attempting to delegitimize reports of torture and protests that attempt to paint Bahrain as safe. At the same time, Cracknell highlights what he describes as attacks on police. Reading his emails it's as if there are two Bahrains that exist simultaneously; one filled with violent, evil anti-government protestors who rage against the police and another that's mostly peaceful.

No doubt there will be protests in Bahrain against the holding of the race. Most likely they will result in deaths. But Formula 1 is extremely big business and the blood of a few Bahrainis is not going to be allowed to interrupt proceedings.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Not a crime to seek asylum

An early campaigner for women’s rights, philosopher John Stuart Mill argued 141 years ago that the treatment of women was the measure of any society’s civilisation.

By that measure, today’s Britain is a sorry place, as campaigners against the brutal treatment of female asylum seekers, the most vulnerable women in the world, have documented

Rape survivors, mainly from countries in Africa, make up over 70% of female asylum seekers. Instead of receiving solace and support, they face not only the nightmare labyrinth of gaining asylum status but are held in prison-like conditions.

Tomorrow a number of women who have survived the horrors of sexual abuse will testify in person at a meeting in the House of Commons organised by the All African Women’s Group and Black Women’s Rape Action Project.

Their meeting takes place just as Conservative leader David Cameron announced that his party would put a cap on immigration. Cameron was upping the anti-immigration propaganda, after the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, said that Britain’s population was growing too quickly.

Such calls, and their inevitable echoes as New Labour seeks to outdo the Tories in playing the race card, will only worsen the situation for the hundreds, perhaps thousands of women who are being detained.

Reports by organisations such as Amnesty International and the Refugee Council indicate that there may be around 25,000 asylum seekers held in UK detention centres, mostly under unbearable conditions.

The Yarl’s Wood removal centre, which holds 400 women and their families, has seen several hunger strikes and protests against what women describe as “the brutal, profit-oriented regime” run by the SERCO Group PLC and violent deportations by privatised security companies.

Idri Jawara, who will speak tomorrow, fled Gambia this year after being a victim of female genital mutilation, followed by rape and violent beatings. Her husband took her to a Sharia court, which found her guilty of “having a forbidden relationship” with a female friend. The court found her guilty and sentenced her to death by stoning on 11 May 2009.

When she sought asylum in Britain under the Refugee Convention, she was detained in Yarl’s Wood. Although the House of Lords held in 2006 that female genital mutilation is a form of torture, Jawara was put into the “fast track” process which gave her only two days to apply for asylum and six days to appeal a refusal.

“Like 98% of other applicants considered under the fast track, Ms Jawara was refused,” say the campaigners from Legal Action for Women, based at the Crossroads Women’s Centre.

Also like hundreds of other women, Jawara was left without legal representation, as her lawyer concluded that not having gathered any of the key evidence, her case had no merit. At this stage the Black Women’s Rape Project took up her case and she was finally released just before Christmas.

New Labour immigration officials have spoken proudly about their success in “removing” those seeking asylum in the UK. As the All African Women’s Group says, of the 42 million displaced people worldwide, “80% are women and children who are casualties of wars, many of which are fomented and supported by the British government.”

A World to Win salutes the courage of these women, fighting oppression in their home countries and against the cruel treatment they receive in the UK. In our forthcoming Manifesto of Revolutionary Solutions, we will argue for the immediate end to detention of asylum seekers and the principle of free immigration into Britain.

Meanwhile, we shed no tears over the departure of any bankers from the City of London.

Can You Hear us? Women’s uncensored experiences of detention and deportation, is in Committee Room 5, House of Commons at 6-8pm 14 January.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary