Despite being one of the biggest abusers of workers’ rights, a regime whose officials are now facing trials abroad for crimes against humanity, the regime of Iran is still being allowed to send its representatives to the International Labour Organisation’s annual conferences every year.
And every year, our party has organised campaigns outside and inside the ILO gathering to demand the expulsion of this regime from the ILO.
We have always said: A regime that jails, tortures and flogs worker activists has no place in the ILO and must be thrown out of this organisation. Just as the Nazi regime’s representatives were thrown out of the ILO conference back in 1933.
As if the arrest and jailing of worker activists and teachers in Iran was not enough, this regime even arrests and takes hostage trade unionists from other countries. In early May, Cecil Kohler and her partner Jacques Paris, both members of the French trade union Force Ouvrière (FO), who had been visiting Iran, were arrested as they were preparing to leave Iran. The regime routinely arrests nationals of Western states to use them as bargaining chips in its policy of blackmailing those states.
Cecil Kohler and Jacques Paris and all jailed teachers and workers activists in Iran must be released immediately.
We call on the representatives of international trade unions attending this conference to echo the call for the expulsion of the regime of Iran from the ILO and demand that the ILO executive respect the wishes of the workers of Iran to bar this regime from the ILO. The regime of Iran has no place in any international organisation, least of all a body that bears the name of worker.
Just like the Apartheid regime in the 1980s, the brutal regime of Iran must be subjected to a comprehensive political, cultural and sporting boycott and thrown out of the international community. All political, diplomatic, cultural and sporting ties with this regime must be ended.
This is the demand of the workers of Iran. It is the demand of all the people of Iran.
On Friday 10th June our party will join the protest outside the ILO conference venue in solidarity with the workers of Iran called by five French trade unions, namely CFDT, CGT, FSU, Solidaires and UNSA.
Worker-communist Party of Iran – International Office
June 9, 2022
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Website: www.wpiran.org/english
Contact: international.office@wpiran.org
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