August 2010
For Freedom of the Detained Teachers in Iran
More than one million teachers in Iran are deprived of their basic rights regarding their social and employment rights. Receiving low wages that sometimes is not paid for several months, lack of insurance and proper medical facilities, unsecured employment, housing problem, and ideological and unscientific educational system are among the most important problems that Iranian teachers are dealing with. These teachers have been struggling for over ten years to improve their working condition, but each time, their efforts and objections have been violently confronted by the Islamic regime in Iran.
Not only the widespread protests of the teachers in recent years have been declared unlawful, at the same time, most of their organizations have been considered illegal, and all their efforts for pursuing their demands in the form of legal organizations and groups have been suppressed.
In the recent years, because of teacher’s opposition to their working and living condition, and because of their effort to improve these situation, thousands of their leaders and families have been under the most severe pressures by the police and the Iranian secret service. The regime’s responses to this opposition have been a constant threat, expulsion, imprisonment and torture, exile and execution of the teachers.
Although the case of the young teacher Farzad Kamangar who was executed 2 months ago is not the only one, it is one of the most known, and obvious ways of the regime’s reactions against the defying teachers.
Farzad was a journalist and active member of the Teachers Union of Kurdistan who was arrested in 2006 in accusation of being a member of the one of the opponent organizations of the regime. The police and the secret service had no proof against him. All these years that Farzad was in prison, they tortured him brutally, but he never compelled to what he was accused of. However, according to his solicitor, in a court that lasted only a few minutes he was sentenced to be executed and he was executed secretly in the dawn of 9th of May 2010, whereas his legal case was still in the progress.
At the present time there are numerous teachers in the prisons in Iran, and one of them is at risk of being executed.
Mr Abdolreza Ghanbari is one of them who has been sentenced to execution by the revolutionary Court of Tehran. He is one of the teachers of Pakdasht high school and a lecturer of the university with many years of experience in teaching in schools and universities. On the 14 of January 2010 he was arrested and sentenced to the execution on accusation of “fighting against the regime through the link with the opposition groups”. The court used these reasons in sentencing Alireza Ghanbari : “ to have suspicious emails and relationship with one of the TV stations outside the country”.
Seyed Hashem Khwastar, Rasoul Badaghi, Abdollah Momeni, Mahmoud Beheshti Langaroudi, ali Akbar baghani, Mohamad davari, Alireza Hashemi, Hossein Bastani Nejad, ghorban Ahmadi, Farajollah Zendehdelan, Mohamadali Shirazi, Mehdi Farahi Shandiz and Shahani are other detained teachers which some of them have been detained for months without being given any reason for their detention from the judicial system of Iran. Their families are trying to find some information about their situation and the reason for their imprisonment.
The violent reaction of the Islamic Republic of Iran against the teachers and other opponents’ protests, have created a wide spread wave of internal and international oppositions. The international organizations and foundations like (EI), I.L.O and Amnesty International alongside the people of Iran, times and times have condemned the government and the leader of Iran for their violent suppressing of the teachers’ protests and asked them to end these violent confrontations against the protesters, and called the regime to comply with their demands.
Help us
to put pressure on the Islamic Regime of Iran to release jailed teachers