Maryam Rajavi supports the striking workers
NCRI – Today more than 3,000 sugar cane factory workers began their eighth day of strike at 7:30 a.m. outside the factory’s administration office in the southwestern city of Shoosh.
To disperse the angry workers, Mullah Yaqoub Shafiq, the factory’s manager, the city’s mayor, the region’s governor, and the director of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) in Shoosh as well as the commander of the State Security Forces (SSF) in the area were at hand. An official read a statement referring to the rules that if any of the workers refused to end his strike, the act then would be considered as not showing up for work altogether which automatically terminates his contract with the factory.
The striking workers paid no attention by shouting slogans, "We are hungry, a decent living condition is our undeniable right," and "Manager is a liar." The SSF and plainclothes agents were busy taking pictures and films from the participants.
In the past few days, the SSF units took away two of the labor activists Messrs Behzad Qasabi and Rahim Alijani to an undisclosed location.
President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi saluted the striking sugar cane factory workers and called on other workers and youths throughout the country to support them.
She said that the mullahs’ regime, in the course of its rule, has nothing to offer the Iranian people but poverty, suppression and humiliation. Iran’s vast natural resources, in past three decades, have either been used to enhance suppression at home, pursue nuclear projects, and spend huge amounts on military to expand terrorism and fundamentalism abroad or deposit in the personal bank accounts of the regime’s officials and their families and relatives outside Iran.
Mrs. Rajavi called on international labor unions as well as the international human rights organizations to support their fellow striking workers in the sugar factory in Shoosh and adopt urgent measures to free the detainees.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
October 6, 2007
