|
To: International Labour Organisation
Mansoor Osanlou is still in prison. We must free him.
What is Mr Sadeghi up to at the ILO!
I, Borhan Divargar, a labour activist and the former secretary of the Association Against Unemployment in Iran. As you are aware a court in Iran sentenced me to two and a half year sentence for organising a May Day rally in the city of Saqez in western Iran. The Iranian authorities were conspiring to increase my sentence and adding further “crimes” such as setting up the Association Against Unemployment (AAU) and attempting to organise workers and having contacts with labour activists. Under mounting pressure from the security forces and other authorities I was forced to flee Iran and move abroad. I was compelled to relinquish my role in the AAU and stop my other activities.
I should stress that I feel obliged to continue with my activities in defence of my colleagues to attain their internationally recognised rights. While my colleague Mansoor Osanlou is in prison I can not rest.
Dear friends,
You are aware that our colleague Mansoor Osanlou is still in prison. He has been imprisoned since February 2006 accused of organising Tehran Bus Workers Syndicate. I can not understand why the ILO and other international workers institutions have kept quiet? Who is responsible for his release and the survival of his family? Why the ILO and the international Free Trade Unions are not taking any measures to release him? Are you aware that he is, at this very moment, subjected to customary tortures of the Iranian regime? I and other labour activists in Iran expect you rush to the assistance of the labour activists who by endangering their lives attempt to fight for the rights of the workers in Iran.
I find it very difficult to comprehend that while Mr Osanlou is in jail, you receive Hassan Sadeghi, the head of the Islamic Council of Labour, the very person who has attacked Mansoor Osanlou and involved in his arrest. I am sure you have been informed that Hassan Sadeghi, together with a number of the officials of the Islamic Council of Labour had attacked the meeting of the activists of the Tehran Bus Workers Syndicate and he personally assaulted Mr Osanlou with a knife. Hassan Sadeghi has compiled a comprehensive report for the Information Ministry and has detailed his actions. The Islamic Labour Councils are the political arms of the Iranian regime within the workplaces and they are delegated with the task of suppressing labour activists.
Receiving Hassan Sadeghi as far as we, the labour activists in Iran, are concerned is utterly unacceptable. Workers in Iran are denied their basic rights to organisation, strike and protest and their activities are constantly suppressed. The workers in Iran do not have independent representatives. While the workers in Iran do not have the right to an independent organisation, and do not have their own independent organisations and have not elected their own independent representatives they can not have a representative in the ILO. We expect you to put pressure on the Iranian government to end the suppression of the workers and recognise the basic rights of the workers.
The Islamic Labour Councils and Hassan Sadeghi must be expelled from the ILO. The ILO must declare that it will not tolerate the suppression and the arrest of the labour activists in Iran. Recognition of the representation from a member state must be linked to the respect for the right to organisation and the establishment of free and independent workers organisation.
Respectfully yours Borhan Divargar
Cc: International Confederation of Free Trades Unions Amnesty international International Union of Transport Workers Tel. 00905438682904
|