Ali Pour Soleiman, a blogger and teacher was arrested in Iran last week according to HRANA, the human rights activists news agency. He was a member of the Teacher’s Association wrote for Sokhane Molem a teacher’s blog. The charges he faces are unclear.
Iranian activist, Haleh Sahabi, 56, died yesterday (1 June) after a scuffle with Iranian security personnel during her father’s funeral procession. Sahabi died in hospital after apparently suffering a heart attack. The regime tightly controls opposition funerals to ensure they do not become a catalyst for protests. Sahabi was a women’s rights activist, and government opponent like her father, Ezatollah Sahabi, 81, who founded one of Iran’s first independent papers, Iran-é-Farda. She was sentenced to a two year prison term for protesting during President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s swearing-in ceremony in August 2009. Sahabi was released on furlough from jail to attend to her ailing father.
Eight years ago my colleagues and I set out to see what school life was like for 11-13 year olds around the world. I went to Iran, and spent several days with girls at a Tehran school. The building was a large house, once home to a wealthy Iranian family — I speculated they were possibly living in exile since, or forced into smaller accommodation, or perhaps the father was imprisoned or killed, if they had a son he may have been sent to the frontline during the Iran-Iraq war, or been lucky enough to flee the country if he was under 13 — the age of conscription. These houses were taken over by the revolutionary guard in 1979 and 1980 and such scenarios were common.
The school day began in the school courtyard — once the garden — the girls standing in rows in their black uniforms, for assembly. A large swimming pool stood empty along the left hand wall and the inside walls were covered in the regime’s flags. I stood to the side as the girls repeated the morning prayers and anti-West chants coming from a loudspeaker. I watched their faces, finding the same playful expressions of my own school assembly days. The focus may have been different but the distracted anticipation towards the day, best friends by our sides, was the same.
I saw many unfamiliar and disconcerting things while visiting the school, most notably a point system that was at play: The family living room remained furnished with a majestic Persian carpet but the room now served as the school’s prayer room. Girls removed their shoes at the door and entered at their own chosen time during different free periods throughout the day. For each visit to the prayer room they were awarded individual points, accumulated to be able to participate in fun school activities. But what I left the school with, was a sense of proximity to the outside world. The girls’ favourite stories were the Harry Potter books — in translation in the school library — their idea of beauty was Jennifer Lopez, the questions they asked me were those of girls at the cusp of puberty. Trends and fashion seep through even the most austere structures.
Earlier this month Jack Kirby wrote in Guardian Weekly about how the regime controls usage of the English language and the Western culture it provides access to, in Iranian schools and the rest of society.
Now a recent documentary gives us fresh insight into the daily lives of teenage girls in an Iranian school — from surface constraints and pupils being suspended for plucking their eyebrows, to a more important rare glimpse at the girls’ thoughts and ideas. Director Nahid Rezai was herself a pupil at the school 25 years ago and goes back to introduce herself to the pupils there, reflecting on her dreams and aspirations then, and asking the girls where they would like to be 20 years from now. More a series of vox pops commenting on every aspect of life, the film is exceptional viewing for anyone interested in the individual psyches of young women in Iran today. Watch it in five 10 minute parts here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLTNZJNP_MY
Iranian workers are denied the basic right of assembly but each year they valiantly mark May Day. Iran’s labour movement has a long and courageous history: despite the fact that workers have no right to form unions or express their grievances, many bravely do, facing imprisonment for claiming unpaid wages.
This year, worker groups in Iran joined together to issue a statement highlighting their circumstances on International Workers’ Day. The following is an extract:
“The so-called ‘rationalization of subsidies’ [elimination of all subsidies for basic goods being carried out by Ahmadinejad’s government] is ever more destroying the lives and livelihoods of millions of workers’ families, yet we do not have the right to freely protest against this situation. With the dizzying increase in the prices of energy [gas and electricity] and the ever-increasing shutdown of factories, hundreds and thousands of workers are forced to join the millions of unemployed. Meanwhile, they [the rulers] change the terms and conditions for unemployment benefits to the detriment of workers; they obtain franchises in hospitals and clinics that attend to workers, and set different criteria for retirement benefits; they tie up construction workers’ insurances with labyrinthian bureaucratic rules; and at the same time that raise the prices of basic goods by astronomical amounts [by 5 to 8 times] , while raising the minimum wage for workers by an insulting 9.0%.
In our view, for millions of desperate and destitute workers’ families trying to scrape a living in these conditions, all the mentioned factors have no meaning other than increased pressure in trying to make ends meet. However, we the workers will not be observers of the slow death of our families and will not accept the daily assault on our lives and livelihoods, but stand unified against poverty, misery and the total lack of social rights. In this context, we the Iranian workers announce our utter abhorrence for the current conditions, and call on all the people in the country to collectively raise their general demands.
Signed:
Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company
Free Union of Iranian Workers
Committee for reopening Painters and Interior Design Workers’ Syndicate
Committee for reopening Mechanical Metals Workers Syndicate
Society in Defense of Workers’ Rights
Committee for Pursuit of Forming Workers’ Organizations
Coordinating Committee to Help Form Workers’ Organizations”
Full statement and demands can be read here
Jailed activist Mansour Osanlou who has been a key figure in Iran’s worker movement has taken this further.
I wish 1 May to become a day of anger for my fellow countrymen and fellow workers – a day of anger of all the wage-earners of Iran.” In a note from prison he continued, “We welcome 1 May in such circumstances that the ruling dictatorship and despots in their fascist approach bar every protest, in effect leaving us to die of hunger and poverty while telling us not to make a sound.
24 scholars worldwide have signed a statement by The International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran (IASWI) recognising jailed workers in Iran.