NCRI – The suppressive security forces of the Iranian Regime reportedly arrested several workers from the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Mill in Ahvaz, on Saturday, March 31, for protesting over unpaid wages.
The Iran Free Trade Union (IFTU) said that twenty workers were summoned and 10 were detained on Saturday following a complaint filed by the mill’s owner, but neither the security forces nor the judicial officials have commented on the reports yet.
Haft Tapeh Trade Union reported that these detained workers included Hassan Fazeli, Fuad Badawi, Sajid al-Katheer, Hassan al-Kathir, Mohammad Khanifar, Sa’eed Mansouri, Habib Chanani, Jassim Hamdani, Jasib Hamdani and Mahdi Thame’ei.
The HTTU said: “Not only the workers have not received their salaries for months and no New Year bonus, they are being subjected to legal prosecution instead of their employer being held responsible”.
The IFTU has described these detentions as “deplorable” and called on local and international trade unions to shine a light of the suppression of thousands of workers at the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Mill, who work under a system of “systematic medieval style slavery”.
The IFTU has also called on President Hassan Rouhani to help end the workers’ suffering by taking the complex back into public hands, but the truth is that this won’t happen.
Following this, the mill’s owner ordered the sugar cane factory – the only one in Iran – be shut down “until order and security is reinstated at the place.”
Other protests
This follows on from reports that five other workers were arrested on Thursday, March 29, while attending a protest in front of the Shush Governor’s offices.
Abdolhossein Al-Katheer, the Deputy Governor of Shush, dismissed the protesters and accused them of being provoked by outside forces.
The workers responded by reminding him that their grievances include overdue wages and unpaid bonuses, which the mill owner has not paid.
There are also reports that Raheem Basak and Qorban Alipour, members of the board of directors of Haft Tapeh’s Labor Syndicate, were arrested on Sunday, March 18, alongside two of the syndicate’s activists, Karamat Pum and Issma’eil Bakhshi.
The Iranian Regime has become increasingly harsh about labour protests, during the latest anti-regime uprising, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accusing the Regime’s “enemies” of riling up the workers.
Of course, what Khamenei and his cronies do not see is that they have made the Iranian people enemies of the Regime by mistreating them for nearly 40 years. The Iranian people know that their woes will not end until the Regime falls, so they will keep rising up until they get regime change.