Iran, June 13, 2018, the workers of the National Group of Ahvaz alloyed steel, started their sixteenth day of strike, in front of the city’s Governorate.
They were protesting the arrest of their colleagues by the regime’s repressive security forces, and chanted: The detained workers must be freed, the thieves are on the loose but the workers are tightened on the noose, neither threads nor jails are of any use anymore.
On Tuesday, June 12, the workers of the Ahvaz Steel National Group continued to strike despite the intensive presence of repressive forces for the third week with the slogan “Detained workers must be freed”. They protested against the arrest of workers, as well as the failure to pay months of salaries and bonuses and end-of-year rewards (not paid since 2011).
Ahvaz Steel, with 54 years of experience, is a large manufacturer of rolling products with a capacity of three thousand specialized workforce. This huge industrial complex was privatized to government agents in 2009, under the pretext of privatization, and was handed over to the National Bank two years later, following a massive 3 billion tomans embezzlement. After the embezzlement of 400 million tomans from the property of the complex, the National Bank also auctioned it in March 2016. As a result, astronomical plunder and catastrophic economic policies of the regime have stopped the production of Ahvaz steel and the deprivation and unemployment of its workers.
The Iranian Resistance salutes the striking workers and condemns these arbitrary arrests, and calls on the general public, especially the brave young people and the hard workers of Khuzestan, to stand in solidarity with the strikers, and calls on the international human rights and labor rights bodies to condemn the suppressive and anti-labor policies of the clerical regime and to take action to immediately and unconditionally release the detainees.
Source » ncr-iran