16 January 2010

To: All labor organizations in the world
Re: Expulsion of Islamic Republic of Iran from the International Labor Organization (ILO)

Friends:

You have heard the news of mass demonstrations of Iranian people to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran. The fact is that there is a revolution going on in Iran: people want to bring an end to thirty years of the murder and savagery of this anti-labor, anti-woman, and, in one word, anti-human, regime. Today, more than at any other time, people and the laborers of Iran are in need of worldwide working peoples’ support and solidarity.

Unpaid wages, laying off of workers, depriving them from any kind of economical & social security, wages that are under the poverty line, and more importantly, depriving workers of the right to independent organizing and the right to strike has made the labor situation in Iran unbearable.

The Islamic Republic imprisons the worker for the crimes of celebrating May 1st, for building their own organizations, for struggling to obtain their unpaid wages; in recent years, a large number of workers have been sentenced to imprisonment for the crime of struggling for their basic rights. At this moment, Mansour Ossanlou; Ebrahim Madadi; six workers from Haft Tappeh Sugar Cane Factory, among them Feridon Nikufard, Jalil Ahmadi, Ghorban Alipur, Ali Nejati, Reza Rakhshan, Mohammad Heidari Mehr; and beloved activist Farzad Kamangar are imprisoned. Also, during the last 8 months of protests and struggle of people, thousands of protesters have been detained; the exact number of detainees now resident in the Islamic Republic’s prisons is not known. The pressure on those in prison is intense and the lives of many of them are in danger. Also, the Islamic Republic has started recalling activists who were arrested in May 2008 and issuing imprisonment verdicts. The latest cases of these recalls for imprisonment include Sharif Saéd panah, one of the members of the independent Iranian Unions, and a worker of Par ris factory in Sanandaj.

This regime is struggling to take its last breath, and Farzad Kamangar is more than ever under threat of execution. The people of Iran are standing against this regime and its oppressions. At this point in time, Iranian people deserve the strongest solidarity and support from the international community.

One immediate request of the Iranian people from the international community and in solidarity with their struggles is the Islamic Republic’s expulsion from all international organizations. The Islamic Republic is a regime of oppression which has denied the workers of their most fundamental rights. Expulsion of the Islamic Republic, this regime of oppression, murder and torture, from international organizations, among them the ILO, is one of the first things the international community can do in solidarity with the revolution of the Iranian people.
The International Labor Solidarity Committee of the Worker Communist Party of Iran requests from all labor and humanitarian organizations all across the world to exert pressure on the ILO and demand the expulsion of the Islamic Republic from their organization, to demand that governments close the Islamic Republic’s embassies in their countries, and to put the Islamic Republic under vast international pressure and make the utmost efforts in order to free all imprisoned laborers and political activists.

International Labour Solidarity Committee of the Worker Communist Party of Iran
Shahla Daneshfar, Coordinator
Bahram Soroush, Public Relations