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NEWS & LETTERS, August-September 2007Tehran bus drivers' leader kidnapped and jailedTehran, Iran—On July 10, Mansour Osanlou, leader of the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, was kidnapped by unidentified plainclothes agents, according to information the International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran (IASWI) has received from activists of the Syndicate in Iran. It is certain that the attackers are the agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran. There is a new wave of repression in Iran against labor activists as well as women’s rights and student activists. People of Iran not only suffer from economic sanctions imposed by U.S. imperialism and their other allies and fear of foreign intervention, but also are under attack by the Islamic government of Iran. It has taken advantage of the current world situation and is trying to destroy any basic freedom which people have achieved in their struggles against Iran’s regime. Iranian women are under severe attack by the Islamic government of Iran. Numbers of women activists have been beaten and arrested. Youth, students and their universities are also under attack with a number of students arrested just during the last few weeks. We need to protest against the kidnapping of Mansour Osanlou, and condemn recent suppression in Iran, in any way we can. —Ali Reza -- When Mansour Osanlou, the leader of the Iranian Bus Drivers’ Union (Syndicate of Workers of the United Bus Company of Tehran) was abducted by plainclothes Iranian government agents on July 10, he was later found at the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran. In 2004 Tehran’s bus drivers attempted to reactivate their union, which had been disbanded after the 1979 revolution. This was the first effort by Iranian workers to launch an independent trade union after the Islamic Republic had banned workers’ independent trade unions created during the 1979 revolution and had replaced them with state-sponsored Islamic Labor Councils and the House of Labor. In December 2005, 3,000 members of the officially unrecognized Syndicate went on strike to demand better pay. Since then Osanlou and other Syndicate members as well as their families have been viciously beaten, intermittently arrested and continually harassed by the Iranian government. Below is the excerpted translation of a speech made by Osanlou to the International Trade Union Confederation in Brussels, Belgium in June, just before his abduction. The Persian original is posted on the Syndicate’s website: www.syndicavahed.com —S. Sahar |
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