Sharif
Saed Panah, executive board member of
the Free Union of Iranian Workers and an organiser of the 30,000-signature
pay-rise campaign, has been released on an $82,000 bail, according to reports
by the Union. Saed Panah was arrested on 10 March in the city of Sanandaj in
the West of Iran and detained without any charges. Meanwhile, six other labour
activists, all members of the Co-ordinating Committee to Help Form Workers’
Organisations, are still in jail. They are: Vafa Ghaderi, Seyed Khaled Hosseini,
Ali Azadi, Behzad Farajollahi, Hamed Mahmoud Nejad and Ghaleb Hosseini.
All these activists are
being held purely for their union activities.
Throughout
the detention of the worker activists, their families have kept up their
protest gatherings outside the Intelligence Ministry building in the city of
Sanandaj.
Arbitrary arrests and
detentions, long prison terms following fabricated trials, torture and abuse,
denial of medical care, threatening the families of the detainees, imposition
of extortionate bails, and so on, are part and parcel of a programme of
persistent persecution which the Islamic regime in Iran practises against
workers demanding their rights and attempting to organise.
Only forceful protests in
Iran and internationally can put an end to this flagrant denial of worker
rights and persecution of labour activists.
* * *
Delighted at the release of Sharif Saed Panah, Free Them Now! calls for the immediate and unconditional release of the other jailed workers and all political prisoners
in Iran.
28 March 2013
Free Them
Now! Campaign to Free
Jailed Workers in Iran
Shahla Daneshfar (shahla_daneshfar@yahoo.com)
Bahram Soroush (bahram.soroush@gmail.com)
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