Mud-huts used as homes in shantytowns are among the gloomiest symbols of poverty in Iran. These huts, which take only a couple of days to erect, multiply rapidly, and then are destroyed by the Iranian regime’s police or municipality agents.
Life in the slums usually goes together with unemployment and the absence of sanitation or schools.
In Iran today, over 20 million people out of about 80 million Iranians live in shantytowns – a clear sign of a tremendous social disaster that is a result of 40 years of the mullahs’ corrupt rule.
Those living in the slums are forced to migrate from their hometowns to metropolises because of drought, poverty or war. They cannot afford high living costs in metropolises, so they are forced to build huts in shantytowns and continue living in poverty.
After the capital Tehran, Mashhad is the second-largest city in Iran with a high rate of slum dwellers compared to the city’s population. Now if we add the population of previous slum dwellers now residing in poor neighborhoods, the numbers are astronomical.
The state-run Khorasan-e-Razavi news agency reported on August 5, 2018: “In 1986, there were 80,000 people living on skirts now this number has reached 1 million and 600 thousand people. This has caused villages to be uninhabited.”
“In 1966 one-tenth of the Mashhad population were living in shantytowns. This number reached one-third of the city’s population in 2015,” the state-run Tasnim News Agency reported on August 1, 2018.
The population living in shantytowns next to Mashhad is estimated to be between 1.2 million and 1.6 million. This root of this problem lies in the devastating and warmongering policies of the Iranian regime.
As long as the clerical regime is in power, astronomical embezzlements, poverty, unemployment, & dire economic conditions will not end#Iran
— Maryam Rajavi (@Maryam_Rajavi) October 23, 2017
The regime’s unfair distribution of wealth in the rich provinces of Khorasan, neglecting the situation of lower-class citizens and abandoning villagers to be crippled under drought and lack of water are some examples of the deplorable situation in that region. This process ends in each case with the total devastation of village economies.
Mashhad Economic Capabilities
Mashhad is Iran’s third-largest economic center after Tehran and Isfahan. The shrine of Imam Reza (the eighth Shiite Imam) has transformed Mashhad into a pilgrimage-tourism city, and the regime’s agents profit from its considerable revenue. Mashhad’s share of the country’s economy is estimated at 6%, but an economic mafia called “Astan Quds Razavi” drives and controls Mashhad’s economy, rather than the tourism industry.
Khamenei plans to usurp billions by appointing stooge as head of Astan Quds Razavihttps://t.co/UcaJK44AXX#Iran pic.twitter.com/0orlonjOd7
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) March 10, 2016
“Astan Quds Razavi” is under the control and supervision of the Iranian regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei. No one is allowed to question this huge financial system, and it is exempt from paying taxes.
According to the regime’s statistics, this institute covers 40 huge and active front companies. Large textile factories, carpets, Quds Razavi Mines Organization, Shahab Khodro factory and agricultural establishments, livestock husbandry, Thamen Pharmaceutical Company as well as numerous service companies form this giant economic source. By law, these institutions, which all have economic returns, are exempt from taxation – taxes that should be used directly to improve the living conditions of the lower social classes.
If we consider the socio-economic status of Mashhad like pieces of a puzzle, a clear picture of injustice will form. Villagers lack water for crop cultivation while the regime’s huge economic institutions earn billions of dollars and plunder the Iranian people. Yet it is unclear where they keep their revenue.
The Iranian regime’s long-time oligarchy and plundering policies, such as the Astan-e-Quds institution will end. Mashhad was the birthplace of Iran’s 2018 uprisings that quickly spread over 142 cities. These uprisings will bring the mullahs’ regime down.
Yaghoub Naseri, commander of the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) for the Imam-Reza region in Mashhad, on September 27, at the Friday prayers’ sermon echoed the regime’s fear of a possible uprising. Referring to the 2018 uprising, he said: “The citizens of Mashhad shouldn’t copy what others do in other cities.”
This shows the regime’s ongoing fear and promises the downfall of this regime that has ruined people’s lives.
Source » ncr-iran