More Protests Across Iran

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Haft Tappeh workers and retirees of Ahvaz
Iran protests: Haft Tappeh workers and retirees of Ahvaz

By Pooya Stone

There were several new protests across Iran over the past few days, from all different sectors of society, including college students, factory workers, patients with a rare disease and their families, and border porters.

On Monday, two Qazvin Counter Manufacturing Factory workers’ representatives were arrested after a protest the previous day, held in front of the Qazvin courthouse.

The Qazvin Counter Factory workers have, most recently, been on strike over their insufficient living conditions since August 20. However, they have been protesting regularly to demand the payment of their wages and have been raising concerns about the competence of factory officials since March.

Also on Monday, the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) shot and killed a kolbar (border porter) on Monday at the Oshnavieh border, western Iran. A report stated that Salahaddin Issazadeh, the kolbar, was tortured before being shot in the head at point-blank range.

There were further reports that IRGC members shot and wounded two more porters in the border areas of Baneh and Nosud.

It is likely that this will lead to protests from porters, as it has done in the past. Porters are frequently targeted by the IRGC who see them as threats to their smuggling operations.

Tehran University students held a protest rally in the capital on Sunday, at the start of the new school year, protesting the dire social and economic conditions, which were caused by the mullahs’ corruption and exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic that the regime has failed to control.

It was also reported that other college students were protesting in Tabriz.

Also on Sunday, Mucopolysaccharidosis type I (MPS I) patients gathered with their families outside the Food and Drug Administration building in Tehran to protest being denied access to medicine.

One mother at the protest said: “My son has taken medicine for about six years. However, we no longer receive his medication for about two years now and we were finally told that my child would have to be tested to confirm his illness. Now, after two years, they still have not given us the result. This is while, in addition to the approval of my child’s doctor, he even has clinical signs of this illness.”

Patients are facing difficulty even getting hold of this much-needed medicine because the regime refuses to allocate money to healthcare, even though there’s always plenty of money for terrorism and warmongering, which has led to patients’ illnesses getting worse.

Read More:

Iran: A Society That ‘Will Undergo Major Changes’