Iran: Press crackdown sparks protests
Students poured onto the streets of Tehran this week to protest at the shutdown of 14 pro-reform newspapers and the arrest of journalists. Meanwhile the banned revolutionary left is preparing to mount a May Day protest in Tehran and is calling for international support.
The attack on the press was launched by the conservative faction of the Islamic regime. It is using increasingly desperate measures to stop the reform wing led by President Mohamad Khatami. The right wing clerics lost badly in the first round of elections and have been fighting back by: a) annulling the results where the reformists won b) a wave of attacks and killings of opposition politicians c) a last minute set of anti-working class laws.
This week the reactionary Council of Guardians set the date for the second round of elections as 5 May - forcing the reform movement to win again what it has already won at the polls.
One of the papers closed - Sobh-e Emrouz - claimed to be in possession of a tape where senior Republican Guards (pro-reactionary armed forces) discussed options for a coup against Khatami. Much of what was predicted in that report has begun to happen.
All of this focuses attention on the workers' movement and the left. Up to now the crisis in Iran has been a split within the Islamic regime itself. But with the opening of dual power between the two factions, the opportunity is ripe for an independent working class intervention into the crisis.
The removal of labour law protection from 2.8 million workers in small enterprises will hit the working class hard. But, as the left publication Iranian Workers News wrote in March:
"Under current conditions, because of an all engulfing economic recession in production, massive job losses and absence of any state or unofficial control, The Labour legislation has lost any meaning. From the time this legislation was passed [...] and yet didn't even manage to legitimise independent workers organisations, some 500,000 workers have lost their jobs in major industries, with no help from this legislation and many protest by workers has had no effect."
The right wing crackdown has had its echo in the large factories. A factory worker in Alborz told the paper Kar va Kargar ( 16/1/2000): I was attacked because when I held a responsibility in the Shora , I defended the labour legislation and I wouldn't back down. For this reason the factory's security section, the factory's Islamic Bassij (a semi military militia) and the management told me off for defending the workers and they put so much pressure on me that eventually I lost my immunity so that I couldn't be elected to the Islamic Shora. This time they tried to beat me up to get me out of scene all together."
Now, a united front of socialist and communist organisations, including Workers Left Unity has called for workers' demonstrations to celebrate May Day on Monday. The communiqué reads:
"The demand for independent workers organisation, the right to strike, an end to individual and mass job losses from factories and workshops , equal rights for foreign workers (Afghani, Iraqi, Bangladeshi workers in Iran ) with Iranian workers in all aspects of workers life, forbidding employment of children, payment of unpaid wages, condemnation of the anti labour policies of the government, the parliament and other state organisations such as Khaneh Kargar , Islamic councils in the workplace are the minimum demands of the Iranian working class and we emphasise our defence of these demands on the first of May 2000."
