POLICE ATTACK UNPAID TEACHERS AND WORKERS
TEHRAN 29 Jan. (IPS) Hundreds of people, most of them teachers, have been wounded, some of them seriously, and as many arrested, following violent clashes that opposed Tuesday heavily armed police and security forces in several Iranian cities with demonstrators protesting against poor pay and miserable working conditions, including imposed religious courses and segregation of schoolgirls from schoolboys in crammed village schools.
This was the fifth times that Iranian teachers, usually among staunch backers of President Mohammad Khatami and the promises he had made, are braving all bans and took on to the streets to voice their demands for a better living conditions.
According to a teacher’s union, the great majority of Iranian teachers are living under the poverty line of 150 US Dollars fixed by the government.
Teachers earn an average monthly salary of between 130 and 190 dollars, on top of state assistance for housing. However, many of them earn less and are forced to take another job on the side.
They also say there are wide disparities and "discrimination", notably with regard to those who work in privileged areas and those in poorer areas.
Teachers have been protesting in Tehran and in the provinces in recent weeks for better treatment. The government has been sympathetic while accusing "agitators" of having an unhealthy influence.
However, analysts said President Khami’s inability to meet teachers and workers basic demands for a better life has badly harmed his image as a moderate cleric fighting for the rights of poor classes.
In the past weeks, many Iranian cities where scenes of demonstrations by angry workers, also protesting redundancies and unpaid salaries.
Their demands were also met with clubs and teargas fired by Law Enforcement Forces.
"Khatami has lost his capital of sympathy with the population, mostly the young generation and women, his main power base, who see him more and more enjoying privileges by siding with the conservatives", one Tehran scholar commented, reminding that Khatami refused to meet delegations from teachers and workers.
The heaviest of clashes took place in the central city of Esfahan and Shiraz, the capital of the southern Pars Province, where police, backed by plainclothes security forces, brutally beat people and carried out "hundreds" of arrests, eyewitness told Iran Press Service and confirmed by both by the Los-Angeles-based Student Movement Co-ordination Committee for Democracy in Iran (SMCCDI) and the French news agency Agence France Presse.
Accused of being "professional agitators" and "trouble-makers" branded as "counter-revolutionaries" getting orders from "enemies" of the Islamic Republic, the authorities had arrested hundreds of protesters last week demonstrating in front of the presidential office at exactly the same time that Mr. Khatami was receiving the General Secretary of the United Nations Mr. Kofi Annan.
"Hundreds of teachers, supported by students and members of other social categories, in defiance of official ban on demonstrations, came to the streets but were subject to violent attacks from Special Forces affiliated to the Pasdaran Corp (Revolutionary Guards), the SMCCDI reported.
"Clubs and chains are used against women, men, young and old as they are requesting for better conditions, the SMCCDI said, adding that several teachers and demonstrators have been injured or arrested.
The Interior Ministry had banned any demonstrations and refused authorisations by the teacher’s unions.
In past demonstrations, teachers, who were joined by students and ordinary people dissatisfied with the regime chanted slogans hostile to both Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, the leader and Hojjatoleslam Khatami, the president, including that one: "We don’t want the Taleban, in Kabol nor in Tehran". ENDS TEACHERS PROTEST 29102