....: July 2018

Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Iran: Amir-Kabir industrial complex (Shapour) demonstrating in Isfahan

Hundreds of people are demonstrating in the Amir-Kabir industrial (New Shapour) complex

Reported by PMOI/MEK

July 31, 2018 - Hundreds of people are demonstrating now in the Amir-Kabir industrial complex (Shapour) of Isfahan, central Iran, protesting skyrocketing prices and continuous power outages.

Bazaar merchants protest in the New Shapour, Isfahan

Protesters are chanting:

“Death to high prices”

“Proud bazaar merchants, support, support”

"No to Gaza, no to Lebanon, my life for Iran"

All store owners in this area have closed their shops and are on strike.

The Amir-Kabir industrial park was established back in 1990 west of the city of Isfahan, eight kilometers outside of the city on “Khomeini” highway and Ata’olmolk Boulevard. The area is around 127 hectares in size where industrial, city and municipality workshops are located.

Protest by people and public transportation drivers in Isfahan

Isfahan Shapour storeowners' protest due to high cost of living

The first phase of this complex consisted of 18 blocks with 950 industrial workshops beginning their work in the early 1990s. The second phase was launched afterward with five blocks.

The people of this area are currently facing numerous problems with lack of services, and critical crises including water and electricity shortages.

Monday, July 30, 2018

The strike of Iran’s truck drivers expands to 125 cities on seventh day

Isfahan & Shahr-e Kord on the seventh day of truck drivers’ strike

Reported by: PMOI/MEK

Iran, July 30, 2018 - The truck drivers of Iran put behind the seventh day of their nationwide strike on Sunday. Their strike spans over many of Iran’s major cities, including Isfahan, Shar-e Kord, Mashhad, Qazvin, Urmia, Kazerun, Chalus, Arak, Kermanshah, Baneh, Shiraz, and Tabriz.

At the terminal of Tarq, Isfahan, the Iranian regime’s agents had put several truck tires on sale at lower prices to break the truck drivers’ strike. But the truck drivers ignored the regime’s offers. The regime is also using trucks and organizations tied to the Revolutionary Guards to counter the effects of the truckers’ strike.

In the past seven days, truck drivers from 125 cities and 30 provinces of Iran have joined the strike and stopped their operations.

The expansion of the nationwide strikes

The second wave of nationwide strikes by truck drivers started on July 22^nd. Despite the ruses, sabotage, and threats of the Iranian regime, Iran’s truckers decided to start and continue their strike.

In the past days, the Iranian regime has tried to end the strike at any price. In Mashhad, the regime’s agents tried to trick the truck drivers to end their strike by selling them cheap tires. However, Mashhad’s terminal remained empty and no truck driver came to buy tires.

In Sarbandar, Khuzestan, the regime’s officials started using the transportation ministry’s trucks to counter the effects of the nationwide strike. The regime took similar measures in Shar-e Kord. In Kermanshah, the regime’s agents tore off the license plates of truckers’ vehicles to threaten them, but the families of the truckers confronted them.

In Bandar Abbas, the regime tried to infiltrate their own agents among the truckers and normalize the situation.

Iranian opposition NCRI President Maryam Rajavi praised the truckers’ nationwide strike.

Background

The first round of the truck drivers’ strike began back in May and continued for 12 days. Truckers in seven provinces began the strike by refusing to deliver any goods and this movement quickly spread to 274 cities across the country, transforming to a general strike shaking the regime’s corrupt pillars.

This movement brought to a halt a large portion of the country’s transportation network, placing deep impact on the regime’s already fragile economy.

Despite resorting to a variety of pretext and crackdown methods, Iranian regime officials were forced to give into a portion of the drivers’ demands, including a 20 percent rise in load rates, averaging load commission percentages between 12 to 14 percent, and stopping plans to launch tracking measures on the truckers’ commuting.

The drivers’ main demands include increased load rates, retirement rights after 25 years of work experience, taking into consideration the drivers’ harsh working conditions, lowering insurance fees, lowering prices of spare parts, especially tires and oil as the market experiences numerous ups and downs, increasing the drivers’ daily diesel fuel ration, decreasing authorities extortions, including road commissions and further charges upon delivery of goods in ports and load terminals stations to companies owned by influential figures, and stopping all repressive measures by authorities against the drivers.

Saturday, July 28, 2018

Maryam Rajavi calls for action to prevent Iran from destroying graves, removing traces of victims of 1988 massacre

The Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran

The President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, urged the UN Secretary-General, the UN Security Council, the UN Human Rights Council, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and international human rights organizations to immediately take action to prevent the Iranian regime’s systematic destruction of the graves of victims of the 1988 massacre in Iran and removal of the traces of this massacre throughout the country, particularly in Ahvaz.

As the clerical regime’s efforts to prevent the growth of the Call-for-Justice movement has failed and it has not managed to send the massacre of Iranian political prisoners into oblivion, the ruling mullahs are desperately trying to remove the traces for this massacre in a bid to evade the consequences of this genocide and great crime against humanity, Mrs. Rajavi added.

She warned that the destruction of the graves of the martyrs --whether aimed at inflicting a vicious psychological torture on their families or at removing the evidence of this crime against humanity-- is a major crime in itself whose masterminds and perpetrators must face justice and be held accountable.

The inhuman clerical regime has in recent weeks razed the graves of the victims of the 1988 massacre and other victims of execution in the 1980s in Ahvaz, capital of Khuzestan Province (in southwestern Iran), and is constructing roads in their place in order to remove all traces of these graves.

In late June, the regime had demolished the graves of PMOI martyrs in Vadi-e Rahmat Cemetery in Tabriz, capital of East Azerbaijan Province (northwestern Iran). In the previous month, the mass graves of the martyrs of the 1988 massacre and other PMOI martyrs in Behesht-e Reza Cemetery in Mashhad, capital of Razavi Khorasan Province (northeastern Iran), had been destroyed on the orders of the clerical regime’s officials.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran

July 27, 2018

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Iranian Government Tries to Make People Believe That Sanctions Will Have No Effect Economy 17 July 2018

Iran Focus

London, 17 July - Ever since U.S. President Donald Trump announced that Iran would once again face the sanctions that were lifted when the 2015 nuclear deal was signed, officials in the country have tried to downplay the impact that they will have. Several officials have publicly said that sanctions are nothing more than a minor inconvenience and other officials have said that Iran is perfectly capable of adapting to sanctions and finding ways around them, as it has done in the past.

However, the Health Minister of Iran, Hassan Ghazizadeh, said at the weekend that the impact will not be quite as easy to deal with as some officials are making out. The Health Minister is a very outspoken official that is not a fan of President Hassan Rouhani. He said that the upcoming sanctions are a “storm” that will “rattle our lives” and said that there is no point in pretending that it is not the case.

He said: “Two choices lay ahead - either to deny the status quo and say that everything is set in peace until the storm hits and shatters everything, or accept that the storm is definitely coming.”

The Rouhani government is going to great lengths to reassure the public that the situation is under control and that sanctions are not going to have an adverse effect on the country’s economy. However, the Iranian people are not easily fooled and they know that the sanctions will have an impact.

There has been a campaign set up with the aim of making the population feel reassured, and there is a lot of talk about resilience. This is something that the people have become used to over the years, and they know that the promises made by the government mean nothing.

Despite the messages of positivity and the fudged reports that attempt to portray the economic situation as being positive, the market is showing that the situation is anything but good. Prices for gold are on the increase. In one trading session alone, there was a 6 per cent rise.

The national currency of Iran, the Rial, has also fallen way below the dollar – around 8,400 Rials to the dollar.

Food products in the country have also been significantly impacted and poultry has hit its highest cost ever – approximately 9,200 Rials per kilo. This is an increase of 80 per cent since last year. Grains and milk are also being affected by a major price increase.

The Iranian government cannot hide these facts and of course the average Iranian has noticed and been affected.

The Iranian government is saying that inflation is below 10 per cent, but experts in the field are saying that inflation in the country is at more than 130 percent.

Although the people of Iran are affected by all of this, they are actually supportive of the sanctions. They know that the Mullahs need to be pressured and finally toppled by them and their organized Resistance.