A Call on the Authorities of the ILO

 

CC: The International Transport Federation (ITF), Education International(E1), IndusriALL Global union, The International union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Caterin, Tobacco and Allied Workers, Association (IUF), and the International Trade Union Confederation(ITUC) and all other trade unions

What other crime should the Islamic Republic Commit to be Expelled from the ILO?

Through the 21-day truck drivers’ strike, 256 people were arrested and 17 of them have been threatened with death penalty by the general prosecutor of the city of Qazvin. Several teachers have also been arrested or called for interrogations during the two-day teachers’ strike last week. The attitudes and policies of the Islamic Republic have always been like this.

You are well-informed that the Islamic Republic has continuously and systematically been busy suppressing the working-class movement. Arresting and executing several working-class activists and disbanding worker councils in the 1980s, flogging striking workers within recent years, killing working leaders in prison by ignoring their health issues and devoiding them of medical treatment, laying off several activists of the Vahed and Haft-tappe unions, arresting more than one thousand Vahed workers in 2005, conspiring against hundreds of striking workers in the recent years, imprisoning teacher leaders, and rehearsing manoeuvres for suppressing the worker protests in different cities and neighbourhoods have been among the policies of this regime. In order to impose miserable living conditions onto millions of worker families, the Islamic Republic suppressed the right to assembly and organization and banned strikes. Meanwhile, numerous executions, stoning, imputing hands and arms, torturing of and atrocities against male and female political activists, students, organizations and parties that defend workers’ rights, even suppressing the half-hearted “critiques” have been recorded in the Islamic regime’s report card. The authorities of the ILO are well aware of all these.

We ask you what do you need for expelling the Islamic Republic from this organization? How many more workers should be flogged by the Islamic Republic in the 21^st century, how many more teachers should receive long-term imprisonment, how many more workers should be expelled, imprisoned and barbarically tortured for their efforts in order to organize workers so that the ILO stops flirting with this regime and adopt a different policy?

We strongly condemn any condescension with the Islamic Republic and demand the expelling of the Islamic regime from the ILO. Instead of tolerating the Islamic Republic, the ILO should put pressure on this regime for violating the most basic workers’ rights and the treaties of the ILO. The ILO, just like international workers confederations, can build pressure on the Islamic Republic for the immediate release of all detained truck drivers, imprisoned teachers, and political prisoners.

There is no place in the ILO for a regime that denies the most basic workers’ rights including the right to assembly, strike, and protest, and heavily punishes those who attempt to practice these basic rights. We call upon all workers’ organizations within the ILO to actively support the expelling of the Islamic Republic in solidarity with the workers and the people in Iran. Only the real, elected representatives of workers should be invited to the ILO.

Asqar Karimi

Head of the Executive Committee of the Worker-communist Party of Iran

October 21, 2018