At least 276 protest rallies from March 20 – April 20, 2021
21-April-2021
Category: Uncategorized
21-April-2021
Newsgroup: Workers and Guilds –
Breathing in Confinement: Despite the New Year holidays and the Covid-19 pandemic, as a result of poor living conditions and economic and social pressures, various groups of people have been continuously holding protest rallies in Iran.
Protesters generally staged rallies because of not receiving their salaries and also for their violated basic rights. This is while the Covid-19 pandemic has made the lives of the majority of Iranians people even more difficult.
According to the Statistics Center of the Prisoners’ Rights League in Iran, in a period of one month, from March 20 – April 20, 2021, at least 276 protests have taken place in different cities of Iran by various groups of the population, such as retirees, social security organization pensioners, workers, teachers, students, pharmacists, farmers etc.
On the first day of Farvardin (March 21), the people of Arab Sorang village protested against the rape of two young children by one of the guards of Golestan Dam. The rallies lasted for 3 days.
In the early days of the new Shamsi year, a number of families of political prisoners in Mashhad gathered in front of Vakilabad Prison, demanding the release of all political prisoners.
Coinciding with the final ratification of the 25-year agreement with China, and the leak of some parts of the agreement, people gathered in various cities to protest what they called “selling the country.”
Social security retirees and pensioners in at least 20 cities have protested five times over this one month period.
The protesting retirees held banners and chanted slogans such as “the retirees are on a sinking ship”, “Our salary is in Rials, our expenses are in dollars”, “We have not seen justice, we will not vote anymore” and “The government is betraying, the parliament is supporting”.
The demands of these retirees are to increase their salaries in proportion to the poverty line, to implement the law of equalization of salaries, strict implementation of Article 96 of the Social Security Law, rectifying supplementary insurance problems, paying end-of-year bonuses and considering the years they spent doing difficult and harmful jobs in their record equalization.
The teachers graduated from ، Teacher-Trianing Centers in the cities of Karaj, Isfahan, and Tabriz etc. held wide spread protests against the elimination of years of service.
A group of stock market shareholders who have lost their moneys, gathered in front of the Securities and Exchange Organization building in different cities in relation to their unattended claims.
Among the protesting groups were farmers in eastern Isfahan who staged protests at the “water transfer site for other purposes” demanding their violated rights including their legal water rights, and in several attacks destroyed the water pipes.
ILNA news agency wrote about the living conditions of Iranian people: “Every day and every year we see a fall in people’s quality of life to the point that they have to eat chicken skin which is not unexpected when wages are not even below the poverty line.”
Jahan-e Sanat newspaper, referring to the people’s collapsing economic situation, writes:
“According to the official statistics of the Parliamentary Research Center, the national per capita income of Iran
In 2004, was equivalent to 5 million and 760 thousand Tomans, while today it has reached 4 million and 740 thousand Tomans, ie it has decreased by more than one million Tomans. According to this center, over the past decade, 35 percent of Iranians, or nearly four-tenths of the population, have dropped below the poverty line.”
The same source adds: “In 2019, in terms of success index among the 17 countries in the region, Iran ranked 17th. And Iran’s economy, which has been experiencing negative growth since the beginning of the 2010s, has shrunk by about 12 percent only during 2018 and 2019.” (Jahan-e Sanaat, March 14, 2021).
Sohrab Bakhtiar, an economist, on Sunday, March 14, 2021, denied the accuracy of last year’s statistics, saying that the population below the poverty line was about 70 million people. He said: “Based on the number of applicants for a small loan of one million tomans and according to the basic economic parameters and variables, there is no doubt that about 80% of Iranians are currently living below the poverty line.” “Also, according to statistics, part of this population, who live on a monthly income of about 900,000 tomans, and another part, who make a living with only a small amount of subsidy helps, are in fact in the category of absolute poverty,” he added.