Latest update on detained
labour activists following the Karaj Raid
Internationa Alliance
2012 - 06 - 20
June 19, 2012- According to the latest update from the "Coordinating Committee to Help Form Workers' Organizations" the authorities have transferred some of the Karaj detainees from Karaj to the Intelligence Office in City of Rasht, the Centre of the Northern Province, Gilan. Five of the detainees are residents of Rasht. All 60 arrestees were delegates from different provinces, especially form Kurdistan, Tehran and Gillan, who had gone to Karaj for the annual general membership meeting of the "Coordinating Committee". The Coordinating Committee is a well-known independent labour organization in Iran, formed in 2005 with the open support and signature of thousands of workers; it is not a clandestine group, many of its members are nationally and internationally well-known, like veteran labour activist Mahmoud Salehi (Who was bean viciously during the raid), as well as Mohammad Abdipour, Jalal Hosseini, etc. There was absolutely no justification for the brutal police raid and for the continued detention of nine of the Coordinating Committee members. The raid by the agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran can only be seen as a part of their overall strategy of repression of workers' struggles in Iran against ever-increasing poverty, mass unemployment, discrimination, repression and the government's austerity and neo-liberal policies. Following is a translation of one of the statements issued by the Coordinating Committee in recent days:
IASWI: www.workers-iran.org
info@workers-iran.org
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Free the members of the Coordinating Committee arrested in City of Karaj!
Workers, honorable and free people,
As we have mentioned in earlier announcements, on Friday 15th of June 2012, a group of members of the `Coordinating Committee to Help Form Workers' organizations´ in the city of Karaj were attacked by security forces. These workers and labor activists were beaten by armed security guards while holding our annual general meeting. According to the latest news most of those arrested have been released, but Cyrus Fathi, Alireza Asgari, Jalil Mohammadi, Saeed Marzban, Masoud salimpour, Maziar Mehrpour, Reyhaneh Ansari, Faramarz Fetradnejad and Mitra Homayooni are still in detention in Karaj City Prison.
Although this is not the first time that members of the Coordinating Committee were being arrested, as in recent years many of our members in different cities have been detained and convicted for defending workers’ rights- our members have been sentenced to prison, fined and flogged numerous times in the past. However, what happened last Friday, while residents of the neighborhood were witnessing, was an assault by armed security and intelligence forces on workers, which included beating and opening fire in the air, all of which without providing an official order. This happened while workers were discussing problems facing them and the working class as a whole. The beatings were so severe that some of them as: Mohammad Molanai, Hasan Ezati, Rahman Ebrahim-Zadeh, Ghaleb Hosseini, Khaled Hosseini and Nezam Sadegi are still suffering from injury and soreness.
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