The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) reports that Iranian security forces arrested at least 28 teachers in the four days leading up to international workers’ day, between April 28 and May 1, 2022, according to the  Iranian Teachers Trade Unions Coordination Council  (ITTUCC).ⁱ

Yet even after arrests of teacher union leaders aimed at preventing May 1 protests, teachers in many cities in Iran rallied bravely, demanding living wages, labor rights and freedom for their imprisoned colleagues. Dozens were arrested.

Iran’s Teachers:  A Key Component of Society, An Important Force in Resistance

Iran’s teachers have been an important component, often in the forefront, of the ongoing protest, struggle and courageous resistance against Iran’s Islamic Republic, a regime of ruthless exploitation and oppression.  This resistance erupted in mass nationwide uprisings in 2017 and 2019, and the righteous anger of the Iranian people has continued to boil ever since, and continues to burst forth in righteous, courageous protests among many sections of the population.  And it’s led to vicious counter-attack by the regime – including executions, beatings, and imprisonment – that has in turn sparked a global movement in support of these imprisoned fighters, including the International Emergency Campaign to Free Iran’s Political Prisoners Now.

Iran’s teachers play an outsized role in Iranian society and the mass resistance to the IRI. By some estimates, there are over a million teachers and admin staff in Iran – nearly one percent of the population! In 2021 alone, teachers have held seven coordinated, nationwide, gatherings in more than 180 cities with women playing prominent roles.  And this activism has drawn intense scrutiny by the IRI’s repressive apparatus; there are currently some 100 “security” cases pending against teachers.

The role of the teachers and their organizations isn’t limited to protests for better wages and conditions.  In the past decade teachers have increasingly raised political demands, “such as defending free education, opposing ideological education, defending native language education, defending students' rights, and defending free and high-quality education for all children in Iran,” the spokesperson of Iran’s Teachers Union recently said.ⁱⁱ All this has an important impact on the fabric of Iranian society and what people are being taught in school and is objectively part, in different ways, of the clash between religion and superstition vs. objective reality/science.

The teachers’ actions have been supported by a wide range of people within Iran, including civil, labor and human rights activists, and the Iranian Writers Association which in a  statement  declared “its support for workers’ demands” and expressed “solidarity in their quest to gain their rightful goals, including the right to organize and exercise free speech without any barriers and exceptions.”

In a statement read at a May 1st event in San Francisco, the IEC sent

“a May Day shout out to all of Iran’s courageous political prisoners. We salute the tens of thousands rising up so heroically for their basic rights and humanity in the face of threats, beatings, arrests, even bullets. This includes those in the streets of Iran today – the teachers, bus drivers, refinery workers and many others. It includes the brave people of the small town of Yaasooj in southern Iran, who together freed a teacher and May Day organizer from the clutches of Islamic security goons who tried to prevent May Day from taking place.”

Esmail Abdi – Courageous Imprisoned Teachers’ Rights Activist Announces Hunger Strike

On April 30, Esmail Abdi,  an imprisoned teachers’ rights activist, announced he was going on hunger strike to “protest the prosecution of trade union activists on security charges and the increasing pressures on the families of imprisoned teachers and workers." There are reports that a number of other political prisoners have been joining Esmail Abdi’s hunger strike in solidarity with his demands.

Abdi, who has spent seven years in prison and is serving an additional 10 years, began his hunger strike as of May 1.  On day six of his hunger strike, the regime suddenly moved him without warning or public announcement.  His family later learned he’d been transferred to Kachoui Prison in Karaj.

Amid Surge of Executions, IRI Threats To Kill Dual-National Political Prisoner

Ahmadreza Djalali is an Iranian-born Swedish physician and researcher specializing in disaster medicine. In 2016 he was arrested in Tehran after traveling there from Stockholm after being invited by the University of Tehran.  He was held in isolation, tortured, and later wrote from prison that Iran’s Intelligence Ministry pressured him to engage in espionage, and when he refused, he was forced to make false confessions without access to a lawyer.  He was then tried on espionage charges in a sham trial and sentenced to death in 2017.

Now suddenly, on the day the trial taking place in Sweden against former Iranian official Hamid Nouri wrapped up, the Iranian regime announced Djalali would be executed on May 21.  Nouri has been charged with war crimes, specifically for being part of the mass execution of 5,000 Iranian political prisoners, including leftists, revolutionaries and communists, in 1988, that Iran’s current president, Ebrahim Raisi, was also complicit in.  It’s possible that this threat is an effort to force Sweden to release or repatriate Nouri in exchange for Djalali’s life or perhaps even to impact the verdict in the trial.  

“The  UN  and international rights groups, as well as more than one hundred  Nobel laureates, have loudly condemned the Iranian government’s wrongful detainment of Djalali and have called for his release,” the CHRI reports.ⁱⁱⁱ‍

This ominous and barbaric threat comes when alarming new reports have documented that Iran executed 333 people in 2021, a 25 percent increase from the year before.”^iv

All this is a stark illustration of the arbitrary, illegitimate, and barbaric character of “justice” in Iran and the need to step up the struggle to free all of Iran’s political prisoners.

Footnotes:

ⁱDozens of Teachers Arrested in Iran during Workers Day Protests, CHRI, May 3, 2022

ⁱⁱReclaiming the Street, An Important Achievement of the Teachers Movement – Interview with Mohammad Habibi, Spokesperson of the Teachers' Union, Akhbar-Rooz.com

ⁱⁱⁱ“Iran’s Execution Threat Against Swedish Scientist Aimed at Thwarting War Crimes Trial,” CHRI, May 4, 2022

^iv “Iran Put 333 People to Death in 2021, a 25% Rise in Capital Punishment,” Democracy Now, April 29, 2022; “Executions in Iran Increased by  25% in 2021, Report Shows,” Kayhan Life, May 4, 2022