On 19th May the Iranian regime executed three young anti-government protesters by the names of Majid Kazemi, Saleh Mirhashemi and Saeed Yaghoobi on trumped up charges, on the basis of confessions extracted by torture.
On 8th May it executed dissident activist-bloggers Yousef Mehrdad and Sadrollah Fazeli Zareh for “insulting Islam”.
Two days earlier, on 6th May, the regime executed abducted dual Swedish-Iranian national Habib Asivad (Chaab), following savage tortures and over two and a half years in solitary confinement.
Many more have been executed over the past few weeks on spurious charges, on the basis of confessions obtained by beating and torture, in sham political trials conducted from high up in the regime, in the absence of any independent counsel for the prisoners.
Having failed to quell the massive movement of the people demanding a life without the Islamic Republic with the slogan Woman, Life, Freedom, the savage regime is thus resorting to the last weapon in its arsenal, namely murdering captive, defenceless protesters in cold blood. However, far from intimidating the people, every execution has only added to the people’s fury and their resolve to continue the fight till the end.
The question then is how is it that a regime that has been committing such horrific crimes over its decades-long existence, including imprisoning and torturing workers and trade unionists, is still being invited to attend the annual conference of the International Labour Organisation (ILO)? What else does this regime have to do, what further crimes should it commit for the ILO and the UN finally to realise that this regime is not the representative of the people of Iran, but their killer, and that it should be thrown out of the ILO and all UN bodies?
Just as the Islamic regime of Iran last year was kicked out of the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women for its blatant systematic misogyny and violence against women, so too it must be kicked out of the ILO. The ILO’s continued association with this barbaric and anti-labour regime and its failure to revoke that regime’s participation at its conferences is disgraceful.
We call on all the delegates of international trade unions attending this year’s conference to join the call for the barring of the regime of Iran from the ILO. This regime has no place in any forum in the international community, least of all a forum that bears the name of worker. And just like the racist apartheid regime in South Africa in the 1980s and 1990s, it must face a total boycott and banishment globally.
Worker-communist Party of Iran – International Office
25 May 2023
https://wpiran.org/english/ international.office@wpiran.org
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