To coincide with the International Teachers Day, the current and retired staff from the faculty of the Ministry of Education in Tehran staged a demonstration. On the morning of 5th October, they protested their low wages and lack of benefits as well as the terrible living conditions they are subject to.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) reported that plainclothes agents and IRGC Intelligence forces were sent to Sepah Square at 9.30 a.m. to prevent demonstrators from marching towards the regime’s parliament (Majlis).
Many people had been threatened by agents of the IRGC Intelligence the day before and were told not to take part in the demonstration.
The NCRI say that the “internet service was also disrupted in the central and western parts of the capital to prevent their organizing efforts and mass mobilization for the demonstration”. However, despite all this, a large number of current and former staff at the Education Ministry were able to get to the Majlis and stage their protest. They held placards reading: “Earning a decent living is our inalienable right”.
Hundreds of the retired personnel of the Department of Education staged a gathering outside the department’s building in Shiraz. The same happened in Mashhad where protesters held placards reading: “Motto of the International Teachers Day: Respect the status of teachers, and improve their dignity and status.”
In Gilan, northern Iran, teachers and Education Department staff issued a statement on the occasion of International Teacher’s Day. They demanded “abolition of discrimination in salaries, benefits, and provision of the minimum living, removal of security, political and social pressures on teachers, removal of the obstacles for the teachers’ organized activities and their affiliated media, provision of social and health insurances, balancing the salaries and benefits of the working and retired personnel of the Education Department with other educational facilities, and improvement of classroom conditions to match international standards”.
The NCRI point out that current and former teachers and Education Ministry staff “do not enjoy a dignified social and political status under the rule of the clerical regime in Iran”. They are deprived of even the most basic rights and live in abysmal conditions. The assets of the Iranian people are spent on “warlike efforts” and the export of terrorism, in particular to the Middle East, on missile projects, or quite simply plundered by the leaders of the regime. This is revealed through the regime’s internal feuding.
“The Iranian Resistance hails all the freedom-loving teachers and education faculty of Iran and calls on the nation, particularly on women and youths, to rise in solidarity with the teachers’ protest movement.”
