NCRI – In a disturbing and agonizing incident, a 32-year-old worker identified as Mohammad Nia set himself on fire this afternoon on International Workers’ Day in order to convey the voice of his protest and that of millions of impoverished Iranian workers against the clerical regime’s suppressive and anti-labor policies to the world.
He intended to meet the mullahs’ President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at 12:00 local time at the regime’s staged event held at the Ibn-e Sina Theater, which is owned by the University of Tehran. However, Ahmadinejad refused to see him, subsequently he set himself alight in front of the university, bringing disgrace to the regime’s ridiculous shows on the occasion of International Workers’ Day. He was later transferred to the hospital.
The regime’s suppressive forces, which were densely concentrated around University of Tehran surrounded the location of self-immolation and blocked off a 400 meter radius preventing people from getting close to the victim.
Financial ruin, industrial wreckage and the poverty of millions of workers in Iran are just some of the consequences of the clerical regime’s plunders and unpopular policies, which squander the nation’s vast resources and wealth in the nuclear weapons development project and export of terrorism.
It is high time that the international community and particularly the United Nations Secretary General, the International Labor Organization, all workers’ unions and syndicates, as well as organizations advocating workers’ rights across the world vehemently condemn the clerical regime’s crimes and defend the rights of Iranian workers.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
May 1, 2010