Iran: Resistance Leader Salutes Striking Teachers Across the Country

In a message on Sunday, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, saluted the noble teachers who have staged strike and sit-ins against the clerical regime’s tyranny and said: “The catastrophic situation of the employed and retired teachers is the product of the repressive policies of the anti-cultural regime of the mullahs, and as long as this regime is in power, it will even get worse.”

The teachers' strike, following truck drivers and merchants’ strike, points out a flare of the public anger and hatred toward the religious dictatorship in Iran, said Mrs. Rajavi. 

On Sunday, October 14, noble teachers across the country staged an indefinite strike and refused to go to classrooms throughout the country to protest their dire livelihood conditions and repression and security atmosphere in schools, and to achieve their trampled rights.

In addition to Tehran, teachers’ strike spread to at least 103 cities in 29 provinces including Alborz, Isfahan, East Azarbaijan, West Azarbaijan, Fars, Khorasan Razavi, North Khorasan, Kurdistan, Kermanshah, Semnan, Qazvin, Mazandaran, Hamedan, Yazd, Markazi, Lorestan, Ilam, Bushehr, Chahar Mahal and Bakhtiari, and Kohgiluyeh and Boyer Ahmed.

In this regard, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) issued a Statement on Sunday saying “The striking teachers are protesting their low salaries and benefits, living below the poverty line, inflation, excessive high prices and reduced purchasing power, imprisonment of teachers, deprivation from having independent unions, lack of efficient and comprehensive insurance, looting of the teachers trust reserves, failure to implement the Public Service Management Act since 2016, failure to implement the rating plan over the past three years, and the failure to implement the full-time teachers plan, among others. They call for the security of union activists, the release of jailed teachers, the abolition of internal rules on trade union activists and returning to work of guilds and cultural activists.”

According to the NCRI, the sit-in strikers also objected the violation of the right to free education for all, non-standard and insecure schools, the country’s gross drop in education, the low level content of educational books, the density and high number of school students, and the lack of funding required for education in the country.

Following the teachers’ nationwide strike, Mrs. Rajavi called the general public, especially the youth, to express solidarity with the teachers and educators who face a variety of discrimination and problems, saying that the strike of teachers and academics in the wake of the strike of toiling truck drivers and merchants’ strike last week showed a flare of the public anger and hatred toward a regime that has only brought torture and execution, war and terrorism, poverty, unemployment and corruption, and plundering of the Iranian people’s assets and wealth.

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