Statement # 1 by Coordinating
Committee to Help Form Workers’ Organizations about
Presidential Election
and recent unrest
Iranian people have
witnessed the presidential elections in Iran. During the debates between
candidates there was never any mention of destitute conditions of the working
class, non-payment of wages, temporary-work contracts, medieval sentences of
floggings, killings and incarceration of workers and labor activists,
suppression of May 1st events….
The reality is that
these candidates themselves are collaborators in creation of such impoverished
conditions facing working class and majority of the population in
Iran. That is exactly why amongst
hundreds of candidates only these four were hand-picked.
In the election process
all resources of capitalists, familiar and unfamiliar liberals, media networks
of world capitalism: BBC, VOA, was utilized to convince people of elections as
an arena for change. In various styles they attempted to convince people that
their votes held some power and value. After the election it became obvious that
all their propaganda were naught.
Voters discovered that
their votes were misused. And now they are protesting in hundreds of thousands.
People should have defended their rights by a boycott of the election, but in
any instance the votes tossed into ballot boxes are being utilized by the
regimes officials. People have a right to protest such mistreatments. While
condemning all the attacks on protesters we remind all that such protests should
not be led by likes of Mousavi, Khatami, Kahroubi, or any other
executives or elements of the capitalist order. These protests shall become a
part of justice seeking by workers and toiling masses against the capitalist
order.
Iranian working class
has been struggling for its basic rights for years and in the process has been
vigorously attacked by the protectors of Capital. In the 80’s simultaneous with
execution and incarceration of hundreds and thousands of activists of social
movements, especially labour movement, they executed Jamal Cheragh Vaisi, the speaker for May
1st event in Sanandaj. In the era of so
called “political reforms,” labor activists in Saghez
were arrested and incarcerated for participating in May 1st events,
egalitarian and freethinking writers were portrayed as hired pens, and some of
them were killed in a process of chain murders.
In the past few years we
have also witnessed Khaton Abad workers getting
riddled with bullets, Mansour Osanloo, president of the executive board of Vahed Syndicate getting his tongue cut and incarcerated,
Mahmud Salehi being jailed and denied medical attention while in confinement,
flogging of labor activists on charges of participating in May 1st
ceremonies, and arrests and incarceration of tens of labor activists in this
year’s May1st event….
Student protesters were
viciously attacked and their dormitories ransacked. Women’s movement and their
activists asking for their basic rights were also beastly attacked, and
incarcerated. The just rights of teachers and nurses were also violated, by
firing from jobs and confinement in prisons.
Now the protectors of
Capital are facing a dire crisis and reproaching each other. Working class and
noble liberated people of Iran should expose such demagoguery.
Bourgeoisie in whichever shape from or color cannot and will not guarantee the
just rights and demands of Iranian workers and toilers. At best the desperate
attempts of capitalist class and their representatives are to turn workers into
a reserve force that could be used to maintain their dominance. Working class
and liberated people of Iran shall not trust them.
Workers, liberated and
noble people of Iran!
Major tribulations for
workers and all exploited masses are: exploitation, extensive unemployment and
lack of any rights, inflation and unbearable high costs of living, lack of
basics rights to from workers organizations, the right to strike, freedom of
expression, and other civil liberties. Such obstacles could be overcome only by
relying on the power of the working class as the main and most powerful societal
force.
Workers and brave,
justice seeking people of Iran and throughout the world, in
their extensive, and freedom seeking protests could and should demand: the
identification, arrest and prosecution of all those who ordered and implemented
the recent suppressions and killings of people, and demand freedom of all those
imprisoned during the recent workers’ and people’s protests. We also demand the
annulment of all sentences against workers and labour activists as well as
activists of women’s movement and students’ movement.
Capitalist order is an
order of barbarism, suppression and exploitation, an order of corruption,
poverty, prostitution, and deprivation. Let’s unite and call for the eradication
of the capitalist system.
Coordinating
Committee to Help Form Workers' Organizations
June 18,
2009
www.komitteyehamahangi.com
www.komitteyehamahangi.blogfa.com
komite.hamahangi@gmail.com
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Translated by the IASWI