Aug 04 2020

Iran is becoming more isolated day after day as a result of the mullahs’ mismanagement and costly foreign policies.

Furthermore, the regime’s terrible decisions have left many people in poverty and harsh living conditions as citizens see no decent future except through protesting for even their basic necessities despite brutal crackdown and authorities’ painful negligence.

In recent weeks, many employees and workers have launched strikes and rallies across the country. In Khuzestan, workers of Haft-Tappeh Sugarcane Company have continued their strike for 50 consecutive days. They initially called on company officials to take specific actions, including:

– Paying the workers’ delayed paychecks and pensions

– Returning expelled workers to their occupation

– Arresting the company’s corrupt manager Omid Assad Beigi

– Returning stolen wealth to workers

Moreover, in East Azarbaijan province, municipality workers and sweepers protested their low and delayed paychecks. They stopped working and gathered in front of the municipality of the provincial capital Tabriz to attract the officials’ attention. Despite the novel coronavirus outbreak, these poor workers have no choice but to continue to work without basic equipment in areas most contaminated with the virus.

Also, taxi-drivers in different provinces are protesting regime officials’ inattention to their harsh working conditions. “The government has not supported us despite a decrease in the number of passengers and existing health threats due to Covid-19,” they say. Several taxi-drivers also expressed their complaints by raising handwritten banners reading, “Abandoned.”

However, the oil workers’ strike is considered as the most important part of the protests’ puzzle for a country with an oil-dependent economy. Through the past year, the Iranian regime has lost massive revenues as a result of U.S. sanctions. The decrease in uncountable oil incomes is contributing to enormous dilemmas inside the country. Of course, it has also depleted Iran-backed extremist proxies in the Middle East, leaving this region far safer than before.

Employees and workers of the Abadan and Mahshahr refineries, the Qeshm Heavy Oil Refinery, as well as workers and employees of the Parsian Refinery, the Petrochemical Company in Lamerd (Fars province), and phases 22 and 24 of South Pars in Kangan (Bushehr province) launched a strike protesting harsh working conditions, the lack of minimum safety provisions, and the non-payment of their wages and pensions, according to an August 1 statement issued by the Iranian opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

In this context, as the regime insists on its costly foreign policies, nuclear ambitions, and advancing ballistic missile initiatives, it also yields more pressures inside Iran and abroad. On the other hand, the mullahs are attempting to curb the people’s tendency to opposition with brutal suppression and excessive sentences such as death penalty, long-term imprisonment, and flogging.

Therefore, the international community must shoulder its responsibility vis-à-vis the oppressed people of Iran, file human rights violations in Iran, and refer cases to judicial bodies and the United Nations Security Council. For four decades, the Iranian people have paid the cost of appeasement policies with their lives and health. Iranians are the first victims of religious fascism. They are the primary beneficiaries of the regime’s weakness, which enables them to expand their protests and bring the dictatorship down.

Source » irannewsupdate

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