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Iran sees nationwide protests, night rallies marking Int’l Labor Day

By Mahmoud Hakamian
Abadan - southwest Iran - oil refinery workers - protest gathering - strike - 2023
Workers in Iran holding a rally and demanding their rights be acknowledged and respected

Iran is witnessing its 229th day of the nationwide uprising on Tuesday following a busy day of protests and night rallies by workers and people throughout the country marking International Workers Day. Cities across Iran saw workers of different industrial sites continue their strike while other laborers took to the streets to hold gatherings and launch marches demanding regime officials respect and acknowledge their rights.

People throughout Iran continue to specifically hold the mullahs’ Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei responsible for their miseries, while also condemning the oppressive the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and paramilitary Basij units, alongside other security units that are on the ground suppressing the peaceful demonstrators.

Protests in Iran have to this day expanded to at least 282 cities. Over 750 people have been killed and more than 30,000 are arrested by the regime’s forces, according to sources of Iranian opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). The names of 675 killed protesters have been published by the PMOI/MEK.

People in the Shahrak-e Bagheri district of the capital Tehran began chanting anti-regime slogans on Tuesday night including:
“Down with Khamenei!”
“Down with the dictator!”

Regime operatives have renewed their chemical gas attacks targeting schoolgirls on Tuesday. Reports from the cities of Sanandaj, Baneh, and Kermanshah indicate new deliberate and organized attacks and poisonings specifically targeting schoolgirls. These latest cases include:

  • The all-girls Kimia Technical School in Sanandaj, western Iran. At least six students were transferred to medical centers and one students said school security were preventing them leaving the complex, according to local activists.
  • The all-girls Saleh Ali-Mohammadi Elementary School in Baneh, western Iran
  • The all-girls Elahiyeh High School in Kermanshah, western Iran. Police arrived at the scene and began threatening the students, according to reports.
  • The all-girls Fasaie-nezhad Technical School in Tehran

Retirees and pensioners of the regime’s telecom industry in the cities of Ilam, Sanandaj, and the provinces of Tehran, Khuzestan, Isfahan, Kermanshah, Qazvin, Markazi (Central), Chaharmahal & Bakhtiari, Hormozgan, Sistan & Baluchestan, Kerman, Ardabil, West Azerbaijan, and Fars rallied to protest their low pensions and poor economic conditions. This continues previous gatherings held during the past few weeks and months in Tehran and other cities across the country.

In the past few years, retirees across Iran have been protesting to their deteriorating living conditions, especially as the government refuses to adjust their pensions based on the inflation rate and fluctuations in the price of the rial, Iran’s national currency.

People were in the streets of Tehran’s Sadeghiyeh district on Monday night and chanting, “Down with Khamenei! Damned be Khomeini!” The latter refers to regime founder Ruhollah Khomeini.

Other slogans included:
“Down with the dictator!”
“Workers are aware and loath oppressors!”

Similar rallies were reported from Tehran’s Sattarkhan, Tehranpars, Chitgar, Shahrak-e Bagheri, and Tehransar districts, while people in the Gohardasht district of Karaj, a major city west of Tehran, and the cities of Isfahan and Mehrshahr were also taking to the streets and chanting anti-regime slogans to mark International Workers’ Day.

Marking International Labor Day, retired workers in the cities of Tehran and Shush, southwest Iran, were taking to streets on Monday to hold gatherings and marches. They were protesting the regime’s corruption, destructive economic policies, and plundering of their money. Pensioners and retirees of the Social Security Organization in Kerman, south-central Iran, Ahvaz, southwest Iran, Sari and Rasht in northern Iran, and Kermanshah, western Iran, were also in the streets and protesting for their rights.

In Shush the protesting retirees were chanting anti-regime slogans, including:
“Neither the Majlis (parliament) nor the government care about the people!”
“Our rights will only be acknowledged through our street protests!”

Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Company directors and site security guards in Shush attacked the workers’ representatives who have been on strike outside the company building for some time now. Company workers protested these measures and security guards launched even more attacks in response.

In Tehran, members of the Veterans Union of the Iranian Labor Community organized a rally and marched in the streets protesting the mullahs’ regime and their anti-labor policies.

In Bandar-e Khomeini, a major portal city in southwest Iran, drivers at the local terminal went on strike and protested for their rights to be respected and acknowledged.

In other reports, workers of the Yazd Tire Industrial Complex held a gathering in the city of Yazd, central Iran, protesting for their rights on Monday. This is the third day of these rallies.

In the city of Ilam, western Iran, workers of the local petrochemical company laid a symbolic empty table sheet on the ground to protest their low paychecks that are making it impossible for them to make ends meet. In other reports, officials of a local petrochemical site banned 200 workers from entering the site who had previously protested the regime’s payment policies and had rallied for higher paychecks.

Iranian opposition coalition NCRI President-elect Maryam Rajavi sent a message to Iran’s workers and the entire nation to join ranks in their protests and link up with the nation’s larger struggle to overthrow this regime.

“Happy International Workers’ Day to the workers and laborers, who refuse to accept oppression, inequality, and repression, and have risen up to protest and revolt, and to the millions of honorable men and women whose whole being has been shackled by the mullahs with temporary contracts, unpaid wages, miserable salaries, unstable jobs, poverty, insecurity, discrimination, and repressive controls,” the NCRI President-elect emphasized.

“The anger and determination of Iranian workers for revolution and freedom are more powerful than the regime’s oppressive force. Today in Iran, under the most brutal system of exploitation in the world – the religious dictatorship – the workers’ ongoing protests demonstrate the immense potential of Iranian society for revolution. From the protests of petrochemical workers in Asaluyeh and Kangan who rose up with the slogan of ‘Down with Khamenei!’ during the height of last October’s uprising, to the strikes of workers in 110 factories and industrial enterprises across 38 cities and 13 provinces,” she added.

“The key to making progress against the ruthless assault of the religious dictatorship and the IRGC on the lives and rights of workers is to connect their protests with the larger struggle to overthrow this regime. Workers should join forces with their colleagues who have formed Resistance Units and do everything in their power to spark uprisings. The exasperated and rebellious workers and laborers of Iran, united hand in hand with the great army of freedom, shall bring down the religious tyranny, and usher in a new era, where oppression and plunder shall be replaced by freedom and equality,” Madam Rajavi concluded.

In the city of Shahriar in Tehran Province, the medical staff of Imam Sajjad Hospital held a gathering on Monday protesting the regime’s unjust payment policies, the officials’ refusal to pay for their special clothes at work, not providing food while only giving 500,000 rials (less than a dollar) for lunch.

Similar gathering have been held by nurses in Shiraz on April 30th, in Ahvaz on April 27th, and the medical staffs of Rajaie Hospital of Qazvin in northwest Iran on April 20th and Mashhad’s Qaem Hospital on April 5th.

The all-girls Bent al-Hoda and Me’raj schools in the city of Saqqez, the hometown of Mahsa Amini, were targeted on Sunday in organized and deliberate chemical gas attacks.

Anti-riot units stormed the all-girls Me’raj School following today’s chemical gas attack. One student was hit in the head by the security units and was rushed to a medical center for urgent treatment. Parents of the students in this school held a rally protesting these attacks that are targeting their kids and endangering their lives.

The mullahs’ dictatorship is seeking to quell and silence the ongoing anti-regime protests by targeting the main engine of these rallies, being Iran’s women and young girls. Other schools have also been targeted in similar fashion today, including:

  • The all-girls Mojtaba Jafari School in the city of Kermanshah, western Iran. At least 40 students were transferred to the city’s Mohammad Kermanshahi Hospital. A number of them are in dire conditions, according to local reports.
  • The all-girls Efaf School in Tehran
  • The Fatemeh School in Harsin, Kermanshah Province, western Iran. Due to a shortage, an ambulance was sent from the neighboring city of Bisouton. School officials had prevented parents from entering the schools by closing the gates, according to local reports.

The protests in Iran began following the death of Mahsa Amini. Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, a 22-year-old woman from the city of Saqqez in Kurdistan Province, western Iran, who traveled to Tehran with her family, was arrested on Tuesday, September 13, at the entry of Haqqani Highway by the regime’s so-called “Guidance Patrol” and transferred to the “Moral Security” agency.

She was brutally beaten by the morality police and died of her wounds in a Tehran hospital on September 16. The event triggered protests that quickly spread across Iran and rekindled the people’s desire to overthrow the regime.

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