“Our enemy is right here, they lie when they say it’s in America,” “Enough warmongering, our tables are empty,” and “No to inflation and high prices, no to war and destruction” were some of the slogans retirees chanted in Kermanshah province in Iran Sept. 21, along with demands for higher pensions and better medical care.
Retirees from the steel and mining industries marched in Isfahan the same day, chanting, “Officials, have some shame. Leave the country!” There were more than 20 protests by retirees, steelworkers, oil workers, teachers and others across Iran Sept. 21 and 22, part of weekly protests that vary in size from dozens to hundreds. Above, retirees in Shush, Khuzestan province.
These demands “send a clear message to the plundering rulers,” noted the Free Union of Iranian Workers. “We, the workers, retirees, wage earners and oppressed layers of society, know you very well and will not allow you to deceive us with excuses like wars, sanctions and the very inflation you yourselves have created.”
The protests take place amid a deepening economic crisis, including water and electricity shortages, in the wake of the “12-day war” between Israel and the reactionary regime in Tehran. Growing numbers of workers oppose the regime’s continued threats against Israel. Iranian toilers face the harshest effects of new U.N. economic sanctions levied after the regime refused to curtail its nuclear enrichment program.
Several of the protests called for freeing Masoud Farhikhteh, Sharifeh Mohammadi and other union and political prisoners. Farhikhteh is one of 18 teachers arrested Sept. 16 when police raided a general assembly of the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers Unions in Shahreza in Isfahan province. All the teachers were released except for Farhikhteh, a long-time union leader.
Mohammadi, a former member of the Coordinating Committee to Help Create Labor Organizations, was arrested in December 2023, accused of armed rebellion and being a member of a banned Kurdish political party. Her family insists the charges are false. The regime recently reinstated the death sentence on her.