Hungry Workers: “We’d rather die…take our lives”

Iran Press News: Translation by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

The banner reads: We are hungry


As hundreds of hungry workers from several bankrupt textile companies from the Province of Qazvin continued their protest in front of the Islamic Parliament’s Assembly, groups of teachers from the Province of Fars also joined them. They chanted in unison: “We’d rather die…take our lives.”

According to reports from the regime’s own media, the 1000 person strong gathering included workers, some of whom had not received their wages for up to 8 months. READ MORE

They no longer get lunch, they have no way of coming and going to work, they are not provided with work clothes, they have not been paid for nearly a year and the temperatures in the factories are near freezing. The factory’s management also regularly and savagely beats, threatens and insults the worker who have no one to turn to; this is what they must put up with, if they want to keep their job and eventually get paid. There is no hope for receiving their back pay either.

These facts were divulged and related by the regime’s own news agency, ILNA.

Over the recent years, these factories were privatized and fell into the hands of the “lieutenants” and “guardians” of the Islamic regime; these Mullah slave drivers treat the already oppressed workers below “Dickensian” standards.

ILNA reported that the wages of the workers were embezzled by the regime’s Mullahs and authorities, from the coffers of housing and employment coops.