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Iran’s teachers, held protests in at least 32 cities across the country outside the Departments of Education and in Tehran, outside the Budget and Planning Organization and the regime's parliament.
They came out in Tehran, Arak, Qazvin, Zanjan, Kermanshah, Isfahan, Homayounshahr, Shiraz, Mamasani, Shahreza, Shahr-e Kord, Mashhad, Bojnourd, Birjand, Kazeroun, Saqqez, Baneh, Sanandaj, Dehgolan, Marivan, Mahabad, Qorveh, Zivieh, Divandarreh, Tabriz, Rasht, Sari, Khorramabad, Behbahan, Bandar Abbas, Boushehr, and Hamedan. The teachers protested against low wages, difficult living conditions, being denied their most basic rights including medical insurance, job security and officials’ failure to address their problems. In the capital Tehran, the State Security forces attacked the teachers’ gathering and beat up the teachers particularly the women, arresting a number of them. One of the protesters has been identified as Mrs Aliyeh Aghdam-Doost who was transferred to Evin’s court in the morning of May 11, with cuffed hands and feet.
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A group of plundered depositors of Ayandeh Bank, held a protest in front of the bank’s branch located on Panzdah-e Khordad Street in the Iranian capital, Tehran, on Thursday morning, May 10. They chanted “Ayandeh Bank steals our money.”
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On Wednesday, May 9, the students of Orumiyeh University spread empty tablecloths on the ground in protest to a plan for charging students for courses. Orumiyeh is the capital of West Azerbaijan, in northwestern Iran.
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A group of female nurses held a protest gathering in Mashhad, the second largest city of Iran in the northeast on Tuesday May 8. They gathered in protest in Navab Safavi Street and Razavi Sharestan against lack of transparency in distribution of the shares belonging to a construction project called Iman-e Mashhad. On the same day in the Capital Tehran, mothers and families of MPS patients gathered in protest in front of the Health Ministry. MPS, or Mucopolysaccharidosis is a rare genetic disorder that affects many body systems and that leads to organ damage. It is caused by a mutation in the gene that makes an enzyme called alpha-L-iduronidase.
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The superintendent of an elementary school in Abadan, southwestern Iran, cut a girl’s hair for not properly covering it. On May 6, in an all-girls elementary school in Golestanshahr of Abadan, the superintendent used scissors and cut the hair of a student because it had stuck out of her veil. Narges who suffers from astma had an attack because of this offensive treatment and was taken to a hospital. In response to objections to such offending measure, the superintendent said, “The schoolmaster is a man and her hair sticking out could have aroused him.”
In a similar incident in December 2017, officials of a girls’ school in Islamabad village in Orumiyeh, capital of the West Azerbaijan Province, the school’s principal and master went to the court yard in the company of several State Security forces cutting the hair of those girls whose hair stuck out of their scarves.
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A state official revealed that the number of women prisoners in Iran are twice the prisons’ capacities. Attahareh Nejadi, deputy for planning and coordination in the Women and Family Affairs Directorate, presented a report on her visit to women’s prisons. Nejadi said: “Visiting the country’s prisons, I didn’t find the situation of women as appropriate. Women with undeliberate crimes are keeping their small children in prison; their children know only of life in prison. According to the existing information, the average age of these women is between 17 and 37 years old; of course, there are older women, too.”
Explaining women’s crimes, Abd-ol Samad Khorram-Shahi, a jurist and lawyer, said, “Women who face hardships in their lives and are sexually abused, resort to drugs to forget their problems and consequently become susceptible to crimes and abuse. This is why we are witnessing an increasing number of women prisoners and feminization of some crimes.”
According to Iranian regim's law, women can be arrested for husban's bad cheques.
“When the basic necessities of life are not provided for people, misdead, prostitution and drugs show up,” Khoram-Shahi added. “All these (factors) lead to crimes. When the mother of a family is in prison, in addition to the harms inflicted on herself, her family and relatives are also affected and this foments crimes in the society.”
“The unsuitable conditions in prisons and the lack of resources, hygiene and sufficient education for women, create more difficult conditions for women, pushing them towards heavier crimes and armed robbery gangs.” (The state-run IRNA news agency- May 9, 2018)
