Mansour Osanloo, the Iranian bus workers’ leader, has lost the sight in one eye after being denied the urgent medical treatment he needed in prison. Apparently he has now received medical treatment... too late to save his sight.
Osanloo, President of the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company (Sherkat-e Vahed) has been detained in the brutal Evin prison in Teheran since July this year. His eyes were first injured in May 2005 after he was attacked by government security forces, who also cut his tongue, leaving him with a lisp.
Osanloo has been repeatedly harassed by the Iranian government because of his trade union activities. He was imprisoned for eight months from December 2005 to August 2006, and also for a month from November to December 2006. He was threatened with five years in prison earlier this year.
Hanafi Rustandi, from the Indonesian seafarers’ union the KPI (Kesatuan Pelaut Indonesia), recently visited Iran to complaint about Osanloo’s incarceration. While there, although he was not allowed to visit the prison, he was told by the regime that Osanloo had received treatment.
The maltreatment is part of a wave of repression against independent union organising that has swept Iran since the teachers’ strikes in March. Apart from imprisonment and torture, the regime now appears to be using assassination to beat down its working class opponents.
Last week in the city of Sanandaj in Iranian Kurdistan, three hooded plain clothes agents attempted to assassinate Majid Hamidi, a member of the Coordinating Committee to Form Workers’ Organisation as well as a member of the Committee in Defence of Mahmoud Salehi. Hamidi was shot seven times in his arm, shoulder and neck and is in a critical condition in hospital.
Other activists have been visited at home or threatened by armed members of the security services. Socialists and trade unionists should be joining the protests in solidarity with Iranian workers and help to build the independent Iranian labour movement.
For more information on solidarity actions see itfglobal.org/solidarity/osanloo2.cfm
