NCRI Staff
NCRI – A fired Iranian government worker from a town in Iran’s Kerman Province has set the mayor on fire, whilst the mayor was sitting in his car, according to the Iranian Regime’s IRNA news agency.
On Wednesday March 14, the angry worker poured gasoline into the mayor’s car, whilst the mayor was inside, before igniting the vehicle, causing sustained serious injuries to the mayor.
The mayor of Nodezh town, who sustained second-degree burns on his upper body, has now been transported to a hospital in Bandar Abbas in southern Iran and is expected to survive.
IRNA reported that the unnamed worker has threatened the mayor on multiple occasions before he set him on fire, while Tasnim news agency reported that the worker began making these threats after he was fired and that the worker suffers from a psychological disorder.
A couple of officials told Tasnim that the worker repeated these threats on Wednesday, but was not taken seriously. Then, when the mayor got into his car, the worker set fire to the mayor and the car. At that point, the worker fled.
Worker’s Rights
While this is, of course, a tragic event, it is reflective of the current appalling state of workers’ rights in Iran, which has been the subject of literally thousands of protests in Iran and many desperate acts by employees in the past year.
These workers were protesting unfair dismissal, missing wages, and unsafe working conditions, but their employers would not listen. Worse still, the Iranian Regime would often punish the workers for their peaceful protests rather than the employers who caused the problems.
This can be seen most recently at a steel plant in Ahvaz, where more than 3,500 workers (out of 4,000 total) have been on strike since January over three months worth of unpaid wages and have called for the dismissal of the owner of the factory and the resignation of regional Governor-General Gholamreza Shariati.
Ten activists were detained after overnight raids in early March, in what can only be seen as an attempt to intimidate the workers.
Whilst in February, a worker at a sugar cane mill in Haft Tapeh, Khuzestan province took his own life after getting into extreme debt as a result of unpaid wages.
These companies are being allowed to get away with these abuses of workers’ rights by the Iranian Regime, most often because the business owner is in league with the Regime. Thus, these attacks on workers’ rights will not end until there is regime change in Iran.