Striking workers at the Haft Tapeh sugar complex in southwest Iran, September 2019
Striking workers at a sugar plant in southwest Iran are demanding the freeing of imprisoned labor activists.
Demonstrations at the Haft Tapeh complex have been held for months over unpaid wages and benefits.
In an effort to shut down the strikes,five activists and labor journalists, including Sepideh Qolian, were given 18-year sentences. Union representative Esmail Bakhshi received a 14-year term, while employee Mohammad Khonifar was condemned to six years.
Earlier this month, Iran’s judiciary head Ebrahim Raisi assigned the head of Tehran’s Justice Department to oversee an inquiry into the sentences. The intervention came after a letter to Raisi from Cooperatives Minister Mohammad Shariatmadari over the “shocking” verdicts: “Protesting work conditions is the absolute right of the labor force.”
However, there has been no further news about the inquiry.
See Iran Daily, Sept 10: Judiciary Chief Orders Review of Labor Activists’ Long Prison Sentences
Hundreds of Haft Tapeh workers gathered on five consecutive days last weeks to protest the protest the expulsion of 20 colleagues, as well as the detentions and lengthy sentences.
Video, posted via the Telegram messaging application, showed strikers chanting, “They have arrested Esmail [union representative Bakshi]. We are all Bakhshis.”
Bakshi and activist Sepideh Qolian were arrested in November and again in January. They claim they were tortured to make “confessions”. Iran State TV broadcasts declared that the two were linked to a foreign-based Marxist group.
Iran Daily, May 19: Amnesty Appeals for Medical Care for Imprisoned Scientist Djalali
The detainees were sentenced by the hardline Judge Mohammad Moghiseh at Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran.
A statement from the Haft Tapeh workers summarized:
All the workers of the internal sections of the company, such as the mechanical equipment office and the infrastructure affairs office, stopped work in support of their colleagues and gathered in front of the company’s management office to protest this ugly anti-labor action.
The Haft Tapeh Workers Union condemns the expulsion of honorable, dedicated workers and demands the return to work of all these dear ones.
Sadly, this is headed toward a bloody conflict with this regime. Both sides are wounded and caged, one by sanctions and the other by a brute, rootless regime, it is matter of when knife reaches the bone.