THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 31, February 4, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
DISSIDENT WATCH: MAHMOUD SALEHI
By Dr. Michael Rubin
THE ABSENCE OF CIVIL LIBERTIES IN IRAN: THE IRANIAN POLITICAL REGIME & ITS DENIAL OF THE RIGHT TO
PEACEABLE ASSEMBLY & ORGANIZED DISSENT -- THE IRANIAN DICTATORSHIP'S CONTINUING SUPPRESSION OF LABOR
UNION ACTIVITY -- THE REGIME'S CONTINUING ARREST, IMPRISONMENT, & MISTREATMENT OF LABOR UNION LEADERS --
THE CASE OF MAHMOUD SALEHI
FULL STORY:
On April 9, 2007, Iranian security forces arrested Mahmoud Salehi, the former President of the Bakery Workers' Association
in Saqez, a town in the Kurdistan province of northwestern Iran. They transferred him to prison in Sanandaj, the provincial
capital, where he remains. [1]
Salehi's labor activity dates to May 1, 1983, when, as a 21-year-old, he organized a labor protest in Mahabad that resulted in
a one-day work stoppage at sixty local bakeries. Forced to leave Mahabad, one of the largest cities in the region, he returned
to Saqez, where, in 1986, the Intelligence Ministry again arrested him for his attempt to organize workers protesting poor
working conditions. Released from prison after three years, he resumed his union activities, founding the Trade Association
of Saqez Bakery Workers in 1994. Police harassed him, arresting him during several weeks in 1995 and 1999. In 2000, while
European leaders toasted President Muhammad Khatami, whom they considered a reformist, the Iranian judiciary imprisoned
Salehi for ten months and forcibly stripped him of his union affiliation. Even though he had received a permit from the
Governor to participate, state security officers arrested Salehi during his 2001 May Day address. Released three days later, the
Intelligence Ministry ordered his dismissal from work. [2]
Beginning on May 1, 2004, after security forces again arrested labor activists at a rally in Saqez, Salehi and six colleagues went
on a hunger strike. Although the Iranian government released the activists on bail, they maintained the charges against them
for organizing an illegal union. On several subsequent occasions, Iranian security forces briefly detained Salehi and his
colleagues for questioning. [3]
On November 11, 2006, the Saqez Revolutionary Court sentenced Salehi to four years imprisonment, although the Kurdistan
Court of Appeals reduced this sentence to one year. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) has
condemned the subsequent trials, which were held behind closed doors. [4]
On April 9, 2007, and without any notice or court summons, Iranian police took Salehi to prison. [5] The Iranian government
has since denied him medical care, despite his advanced kidney disease. Salehi's imprisonment marks an acceleration in the
Iranian government's fight against independent labor. Three months after Salehi's re-arrest, Iranian police also returned
Mansour Osanlou, the head of the Tehran bus drivers' union (profiled in the Winter, 2007 Middle East Quarterly), [6]
to prison. Police continue to round up union activists from a number of sectors.
On August 8, 2007, Salehi smuggled a letter from prison that stated:
"Workers in Iran are in a delicate situation in which they
are moving beyond lack of organizations to a new stage
in which mass organizations are being formed. We have
to be out during this stage." [7]
What a contrast there is between the silence greeting Salehi's pleas and those of Polish trade unionist Lech Walesa, who, in
August, 1980, led a strike that the autocratic government in Warsaw deemed illegal. Rather than ignore the striking workers,
U.S. President Ronald Reagan and various European leaders spoke out on Walesa's behalf. In 1983, Walesa won the Nobel
Peace Prize and, upon Communism's crumble, assumed Poland's Presidency. Rather than enable history to repeat itself in Iran,
though, U.S. and European silence condemns a new generation of Iranian Walesa's to rot in prison.
NOTES:
[1] "Iran: Free Mahmoud Salehi Now," LabourStart.org, Apr. 18, 2007, accessed Oct. 3, 2007.
[2] "Mahmoud Salehi's Brief Biography," International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran, accessed Oct. 3, 2007.
[3] Ibid.
[4] "ICFTU takes complaints of crumbling respect for workers' rights to the highest level," news release, International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, Feb. 14, 2005.
[5] "Earlier today the security forces in Saghez rearrested Mahmoud Salehi," news release, Iranian Workers' Solidarity Network, Apr. 9, 2007.
[6] Michael Rubin, "Dissident Watch: Mansour Osanlou," Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2007, p. 96.
[7] "Message of Mahmoud Salehi from Sanandaj Prison," International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran, Aug. 8, 2007.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Middle East & the Problem of Iran
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
American Foreign Policy -- Constitutional Democracy:
U.S. Promotion of Constitutional Democracy in Foreign Countries
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Michael Rubin, a Ph.D. in History (Yale University) and a specialist in Middle Eastern politics, Islamic culture and Islamist
ideology, is Editor of the Middle East Quarterly, a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School, and a resident
scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Dr Rubin is author of Into the Shadows: Radical
Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001) and is co-author, with Dr. Patrick Clawson,
of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Dr. Rubin served as political advisor to the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Baghdad (2003-2004); staff advisor on Iran and Iraq in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense
(2002-2004); visiting lecturer in the Departments of History and International Relations at Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(2001-2002); visiting lecturer at the Universities of Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan (2000-2001); Soref
Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (1999-2000); and visiting lecturer in the Department of History at Yale
University (1999-2000). He has been a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Leonard Davis Institute at Hebrew
University, and the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.
The foregoing article by Dr. Rubin was originally published in the Middle East Quarterly, Winter, 2008 and can be
found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a think tank which seeks to define and promote
American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam, working for
Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote constitutional
democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly asserting U.S.
interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat. (Article URL: http://www.meforum.org/article/1846 )
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
February 4, 2008
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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