Last year it was the bus workers. Now Iran’s teachers are the victims of the regime’s latest crackdown on labor protests.
In an excellent report from Tehran, The Guardian’s Robert Tait writes:
The authorities in Iran have signalled their determination to break a teachers’ pay revolt by arresting up to 1,000 people in a brutal crackdown.
In a carefully coordinated operation, riot police swooped on demonstrators and beat them with batons as they tried to gather outside Iran’s parliament and education ministry.
They herded groups of teachers into police vans and buses and transported them to detention centres across the capital, Tehran.
Around 150 of those arrested in Wednesday’s protest are still in custody, with the ringleaders believed to be in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. Others were released after signing a commitment agreeing not to participate in “illegal” demonstrations.
Education International, a worldwide federation of teachers’ unions, and the AFL-CIO are lending their Iranian sisters and brothers support.
(Note: Will someone please accuse me of posting about this to whip up support for an attack on Iran? You know, just to get it over with.)
