[Note: Esmaeil Bakhshi is the popular leader of the sugar cane workers of Haft Tapeh in the southern province of Khuzestan, Iran. Bakhshi was arrested on 18 November at the height of a month-long strike over unpaid wages, the privatisation of the company and management corruption. Significantly, the strike, which attracted the participation of the workers’ families and the people of the city (Shush), and solidarity by striking steelworkers, teachers, students, retirees and the public at large, became a symbol of protest of the whole country against the Islamic Republic. During his detention, Bakhshi was severely tortured, details of which he revealed in an open protest letter following his release after 25 days in detention. In the letter, Bakhshi challenged the head of the Islamic Republic’s intelligence service, Mahmoud Alavi, to a live TV debate to answer for the tortures inflicted on him and others in prisons and the monitoring of his private conversations. The intelligence minister is yet to respond to this challenge. In an attempt to justify the tortures by linking Bakhshi to a revolutionary political party, the head of the security committee of the Islamic Assembly on Tuesday claimed that Bakhshi had ‘confessed’ to being affiliated to the Worker-communist Party of Iran. The statement below by the Worker-communist Party of Iran (WPI) has been issued in response to the allegation.]

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WPI Statement

In an interview on state television, today, Tuesday 8 January, the head of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of Iran’s Islamic Assembly, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, claimed that Esmaeil Bakhshi had “confessed” to being “affiliated to the Worker-communist Party” of Iran.  In response, our party wishes to state that Esmaeil Bakhshi has neither applied for membership in the party nor been organisationally affiliated to it.  Even if there were a “confession”, confession under torture has no validity whatsoever.

Under attack from the public following the tortures it inflicted on Esmaeil Bakhshi, and incapable of responding to Bakhshi’s protest letter, the Islamic Republic imagines that with these ploys and fabrications it can justify Bakhshi’s torture.  In the interview the head of the National Security Committee practically admits that Bakhshi has been tortured.  He says scuffles broke out during Bakhshi’s transfer to prison, but that this was not torture!  This is an admission that a worker activist has been apprehended and the agents of the Information Ministry (intelligence services) have started torturing him on the way to prison.

The Worker-communist Party strongly condemns these blatant fabrications against Esmaeil Bakhshi.  It should be noted that while the top officials of the regime have been forced to set up a commission to investigate the tortures perpetrated against Esmaeil Bakhshi, they have at the same time assigned a number of their agencies to threaten Bakhshi into denying that he has been tortured.  The Worker-communist Party strongly condemns the Islamic Republic for these flagrant crimes.

 

Esmaeil Bakhshi has the right, as do all the protesting people, to join any party, including the Worker-communist Party.  The Islamic Republic has denied the people this indisputable right.  Today, thanks to several decades of continuous, widespread activities by the Worker-communist Party, the protests by workers, students and various other sections of the society have increasingly taken on the character of the party’s policies.  The speeches by activists and the protests of large sections of the people against the existing situation are increasingly aligned with the criticism offered by the Worker-communist Party.  Recently, a state newspaper, Resalat, had complained about the “worker-communist” character of Haft Tapeh sugar cane workers’ strike.  Not only the sugar cane workers’ protests, but all the workers’ protests and strikes, and, on a broader scale, the struggles of women, retirees, teachers and other sections of the society, are increasingly taking on a “worker-communist” character.  It is this reality that has so frightened the heads of the regime.  In the words of the head of the Islamic Assembly’s Security Committee, our party is the “party of widening the protests”.  We are proud to be such a party.

The Worker-communist Party will energetically press ahead with the campaign to defend Esmaeil Bakhshi, the Haft Tapeh sugar cane workers and the steelworkers of Ahvaz, as well as the campaign for redress for victims of torture, until the revocation of all the security cases against Esmaeil Bakhshi and all workers, students, teachers and people engaged in justice-seeking activities.  This struggle is an important part of the immense battle that has started and is progressing powerfully for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

 

Worker-communist Party of Iran

8 January 2019