Honourable and Gallant People of Iran!
In the forty fourth anniversary of the 1979 Revolution, the very economic, political, and social fabric of the country has so drastically unravelled by crisis that one cannot see any clear and achievable perspective for its ending whilst the current political set-up exists in the country. It is for this very reason that the oppressed people of Iran – women and men who are struggling for freedom and equality – have become the standard-bearers of a historical and fateful battle to end the inhumane conditions which exist, and they do so valiantly with unprecedented sacrifice in the streets of cities all over the country.
The standard of fundamental protests which has been raised today by women, students, pupils, teachers, workers, activists and artists, queers, authors, and the general oppressed public of Iran, in all places in the country, from Kurdistan to Sistan and Baluchistan, and has attracted unprecedented international support, is a struggle against misogyny, religious and national oppression, and is a revolution against all forms of religious or non-religious dictatorship which has been imposed on us — the vast majority of the people of Iran – for more than a century in the past.
These protests are defiant. They are risen from the context of great and modern social movements engulfing the country. These are the rising of a generation which does not intend to flinch to defeat, a generation which intends to put an end to a century of historical backwardness and no longer tolerates that the ideas of a modern, prosperous, and free society in Iran should remain in the margins.
After the occurrence of two great revolutions in the contemporary history of Iran, great social progressive movements of workers, teachers and retirees, women fighting for equality, students, the youth and those against capital punishment have now retained a position that they can impact the history of the country, and shape the political, economic and social structure of the society based on their mass actions from below.
It is or this reason that this movement intends to put an end for ever to the establishment of any power from above and be the harbinger of a social, modern, and humane revolution for the emancipation of the people from all forms of oppression, discrimination, exploitation and dictatorship.
We, trade and civil organisations, the signatories of this manifesto recognise that it is by concentrating our efforts to unite and connect social and trade union struggles that we can end the existing inhuman and destructive situation. It is for this purpose that we believe the realisation of the minimum demands listed below should be the first decrees and outcomes of the fundamental struggles which the people of Iran have waged. These demands are in our views the only way for the founding of a new, modern, and humane society in the country. We urge all those honourable people who believe in freedom, equality, and emancipation, whether they are in factories, at universities or schools or in localities or the world at large, to hoist the standard of these demands at the high summit of freedom.
Our demands are as follows:
1. Immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners, the prohibition of any thought crimes for political, trade union or civil activities, and the public prosecution of perpetrators and authorities responsible for the oppression of people’s protests.
2. Unconditional freedom of belief, expression and thought, press, forming of political parties, establishment of local and nation-wide trade union and civil organisations, assembly, strikes, marches, social networks, and audio-visual media.
3. Immediate abolition of any kind of capital punishment, execution, revenge killing, and the prohibition of all forms of mental and physical torture.
4. Immediate proclamation of the complete equality of women and men in all political, economic, social, cultural, and family domains, the unconditional removal and abolition of laws and conventions which discriminate against gender and sexual orientations, the recognition of LGBTQ+ rainbow society, decriminalisation of all sexual orientations, and unconditional recognition of the rights of all women to control their bodies and their destiny and to prevent any form of patriarchal control over them.
5. For religion to be recognised as a private affair of individuals and not allowed to interfere or be present in the political, economic, social, and cultural laws and norms of the country.
6. Provision of safety at work, job security, immediate increase in wages of workers, teachers, civil servants and all employed workers and retirees with the involvement, intervention, and agreement of their elected representatives of independent and nation-wide organisations.
7. Abolition of any laws and norms that are based on national and religious discrimination and oppression, the establishment of suitable supporting infrastructure for equitable distribution of state resources for the development of culture and arts in all regions of the country, and the provision of necessary and equal resources for learning and teaching of all spoken languages in society.
8. Dismantling of the organs of suppression, curtailment of the reach of state and direct and permanent engagement of people in the affairs of country through local and national councils. Removal of ay state or non-state authority by electors at any time should be recognised as the fundamental rights of the electors.
9. Confiscation of the properties of all real or legal persons and all state, quasi-state or private institutions which have plundered directly or through state rents the properties and social wealth of the people of Iran. The proceeds of such confiscation should be spent immediately on modernisation and renewal of education, pension funds, environment, and the needs of regions and sections of the people of Iran who have been deprived and enjoyed the least resources during the reign of both regimes of monarchy and Islamic Republic.
10. Ending of the destruction of environment, implementation of major policies for the renewal of environmental infrastructures which have been destroyed in the past century. Returning to public ownership those parts of the environment (such as pastures, coasts, forests, and hillsides) which under the guise of privatisation have deprived the rights of public towards them.
11. Prohibition of child labour and the provision of subsistence and education for every child irrespective of the economic and social circumstances of their families, the general provision of welfare through unemployment benefits and substantive social benefits for all people who have reached the legal age to work or are unable to work. Provision of free education and healthcare for all people.
12. Normalisation of foreign relationships at the highest level with all countries of the world based on justice and mutual respect, banning of nuclear armament and endeavour for world peace.
In our view, the aforementioned minimum demands can be immediately realized, given the potential and actual underground wealth in the country and the presence of an informed and capable populace, as well as a generation of motivated young people eager to enjoy a happy, free, and prosperous life. These demands can be met with the right action and determination.
The demands in this manifesto are the general outline of our beliefs and it goes without saying that as we continue in our struggle and as we gain strengths in our solidarity, we will endeavour to present them in further details.
- Coordinating Council of Trade Union Organizations of Iranian Cultivators
- Free Union of Iranian Workers
- Union of Student Organizations of United Students
- Center for Human Rights Defenders
- Workers Union of Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Agro-Industry Co.
- Council for Organizing Protests of Oil Contract Workers
- Iran Cultural House
- The Call of Iranian Women
- The Independent Voice of Ahvaz National Steel Group Workers
- Labor Rights Defenders Center
- Kermanshah Electrical and Metal Workers Union
- Coordinating Committee to Help Build Labor Organizations
- Union of Retirees
- Council of Retirees of Iran
- Organization of Leading Students
- Council of Free-Thinking Students of Iran
- Painters Syndicate of Alborz Province
- Committee to Follow Up the Establishment of Labor Organizations in Iran
- Council of Retirees of Social Security Organization (BASTA)
Comments
Here's a critical point of…
Here's a critical point of view developped by an anti-capitalist workers' voice from Iran (MACHINE-TRANSLATION):
"Minimal demands" or sales tender for the achievements of the labor movement
Twenty distinct names with stamps and brands and rainbow registration numbers and credentials have issued "Charter" and "Single Demands" plan to say what they are going to do?! Which path have they taken?! What barriers are in the way of the uprising of the masses of Assi?! What have they targeted or given to protest? What alternatives do they propose for the status quo?! What horizontals have they opened before the mass of Assi? What have they been up to during the recent uprising?! What effect have they had on the course of events?! If they have done something and have had an impact, what benefit has it had to the working class?! Every audience expects every reader of the manifestoists to give an answer to the long list of questions, but hesitation to find the least trace of the most vital and pressing questions anywhere in the charter. Even worse, if found, not the way that the worst is misguided. We're going to go to the charter text.
1. The issued manifesto has 20 signatures. The fact is that the entire signatories are workers, unemployed, unemployed, retired, industrial, educational, driver, nurse, nurse, assistant, reporter, woman, man, student and student of working families and so on, a significant part of the worker is ashamed of his reading!! They see being a worker as a great disgrace to their skirts!! Emphasizing that the teachers of hundreds of ministers, lawyers, lecturers of dozens of philosophers and professors have been, they cleanse the disgrace of being a worker from their cobra skirts. Members of the Teachers' Guild Council are of this category, some are still unwilling to accept their class belonging, their job is to claim saviorship and to rid workers of ignorant governments, lacking the expertise and expertise to plan the order of economics, politics, law, civility of capitalism. Charter writers, even though they are all workers, even though they speak of the same demands, while they are all members of the working class or the defenders of the rights and the messengers of the liberation of this class!! But it has 20 names and titles that are quite special!! Why? The reason is not to say that as many shops have their own shops, the basis of their class belonging, not their role in the labor movement, which is the crucial interests of the kiosk. Perhaps they are among the faithful and pious loyalists of the rainbow society, and they see that in the stature of the class, the syndicate, the Council!! The committee, the Kanun, the teacher, the student, the student, the welder, the barzegar, the employed, the retired, the woman, the man, the organizer, the organizer, and so on appear!! From this perspective, charter writers belong to the most backward part of iran's working class. More or less the more progressive parts of these medieval divisions have understood the legacy of earlier forms of production. For example, a large number of students just a few years ago, or even during this uprising, continued to shout that they were workers, staying with them, the number of teachers who have shouted their worker identities over the past few years and even turned against the Guild Center, perhaps from a few hundred times more than the top of the Kanun. It is a pity that charter writers to this level are captives of the game class, the focus of the razor-making, sectarian kiosks. Those who themselves are not under the pressure of the humble interests of a kiosk willing to declare their worker existence, even around some of the low demands of the syndicate, how are they going to be the organizers of the vast mass of workers as a class?!
2- The pain of charter writers has little to do with the pain of the worker mass. They wrote: "The economic, political and social shiraza of the country has been plunged into such a vortex of crisis and disintegration that no clear and attainable vision can be imagined to end it within the framework of the existing political superstructure", meaning this speech is needlessly interpreted. What has enraged this community and led to the formulation of the manifesto, not hunger, sleeping cartons, drug-insincereness, house-to-shower, dehydration and misery of the working masses, is the disintegration of the ossification of the capitalist economy and politics. They see the roots of this splashing and crisis in incompetence, religion, and unspeciatedness of the capital day statesmen. In fact, charter writers have the same pain as the large number of capitalist parliamentary statesmen. In every parliamentary session, they, with the greatest aggression and aggression, record of unfair partners, indulgent rivals and rugged managers, even on television screens, in front of the television screens, call them "workers", call them incompetent and ineffective, and cause the economy to collapse, dissatisfaction and "distrust" of the masses, losses of companies, and the degradation of profits. What is the difference between charter writers' roots and statesmen' roots? It's not clear. They will probably say that they have also spoken of "a nationwide angry protest by women, students, students, teachers, fraudsters, artists, Kolbars, writers, workers, the oppressed general public against misogyny, gender discrimination, inexhaustible economic insecurity, labor slavery, poverty and misery and class, national, religious oppression!"
To deny it, the charter is sufficiently admined to these phrases. The misfortune is that the issuers of the manifesto have awkwardly auctioned wood by tinning these concepts. Firstly, the ugly and inappropriate accusations of assy workers, those killed, wounded, the eyes of the lost, the disabled, tens of thousands of prisoners have been tortured. They have recklessly accused the working class of protesting that the banner of protest and the main purpose of their campaign was what the scandalous platforms of the international bourgeoisie or bankrupt opposition circles have published abroad!! It seems that the ideal of workers and young working class people was to "backward, traditional, marginal society" of Iran!! Replace it with a modern, prosperous, free society with the criteria and standards of global capitalism!! But the more shocking scandal of the Charter is another story. The fact that charter-makers in their text are so ascetic, bound, demarcated, they have used their entire efforts to require no words against the system of wage-slavery!! , make no mention of the relationship between capital and labor!! Do not speak of the catastrophe of the severity of capitalist exploitation!!. If they speak of poverty, misery, lack of freedom, the pressure of deprivations, if they speak of the ironic, coded ignorance of the slave of the theological worker, do not desecrate the sacred domain of capitalism, the absolute tenet of capitalism will protect any inhumane function. Nowhere in the Charter is there any word of what capital is on the masses of the worker, everywhere the root of every misery, hunger, misery if there is!! Incompetence, incompetence, the religiosity of the statesmen has been searched!! The charter is unique in this respect!! To the extent that it is unlikely that even the official texts of the bourgeois state institutions will remain so sacred to the wage-slavery system!! In this regard, charter writers have also proved their belonging to the most right and fossilized part of the Iranian working class. Over the past few decades, even the most uninformed and conservative workers have occasionally explained the severity of their exploitation, homelessness and rebellious deprivations on the brutal atrocities of capitalism and the brutal crimes of capitalists. The thing here is completely absent.
3. The Charter is far more ruthless than some official representatives of the bourgeoisie insists on shackles, stubbornness, denial of existence, denial of the credibility and fielding of the labor movement, to make movements work, separates each campaign with a capital cleaver from the body of the labor movement, and the result of this slaughter is the list of numerous social movements of men, women, guilds, social, ethnic, national, tribal, religious, non-social or class. He does it all with Faragh Bal and then announces that these movements in the historic development of their day and must be under the glorious banner of "woman, life, freedom" !!! They have provided conditions that "make it impossible to form any power from above"!! Moreover, they have created the grounds for the beginning of "revolutionary, social, modern and humane to free people from all forms of oppression, discrimination, exploitation, tyranny, dictatorship"! Charter writers say that "as trade unions, signatory civics, focusing on the unity of social movements and demands, see the pursuit of minimal demands as the only way for such a society !!! to be pursued." Truly, deceitfulness has a limit of shopkeeping!! But these friends apparently do not have boundaries in this passage!!
The impossibility of the formation of power over human heads has made it possible for those who understand the meaning of this phrase to be solely responsible for a nationwide anti-capitalist council movement. A movement composed of the great working masses that has "made the presence of each worker more effective, anti-capitalist and radical in determining the strategy of the class struggle against wage-slavery and the victory of this campaign as a prerequisite for the effective, creative, conscious, remedy and radical interference of the entire workers, the dominance of human beings over the fate of work, production, life depends on the victory of the end of this movement, the elimination of wage labor, the destruction of classes, government and class society, and In this passage, it has been overrun. A movement that, at the lowest level of achieving any small and coarse demands for livelihoods, welfare, legal, libertarianism, has linked the workers with their class struggle against the basis of capitalist existence, has homogenized and co-ordiled the demands, organization, anti-regimeism, overthrow, strategy, tactics and everything by preparing and equipping its constituent masses for the anti-capitalist class struggle. The only movement is capable of making it impossible to form power from the top of this movement. Any talk of playing this role by any other force or movement is the worst deception. Our question to charter writers is that with a few pendant capital guild kiosks, kiosks that refuse to say a word against capitalism, they see all the problems of the cosmos in the incompetence of a few capital statesmen, where and how they have come to this conclusion that the impossibility of shaping power from above has come to an end!! And with these few trade kiosks, they are ready to start the great social and architectural revolution of society without exploitation, discrimination, oppression and dictatorship!!! Does this community have any idea, understanding or cognition of elimination of discrimination, freedom!!!, rights, society without exploitation?
4. The questions are many, but the foundation of the work is the most pressing one. You have not just evaded saying "above the eyebrows" to capitalism, you have not just ignored any kind of politeness to the doorstep of capital, nor have you been willing to make any expository references to the exhumed monarchist oppositions of power speculators and deceiving the working masses. In the case of the coffin of the reformist defeatees, you have made the same tradition. Isn't both evidence of your deliberate finality for the syndicated implication of the degenerate bourgeois shrines??
5. You have completed a list of claims. The demands that have been raised by every group of several hundred people, right to left, claim to solve the problems of capitalism or save the working class, and have become part of the memory of the entire inhabitants of The Hell of Iranian Capitalism. The only area of consumption of these demands has been the announcement of the designers' skeetarian existence, and there is no trace of the realization of any of them anywhere. The question is: is the charter of your demands anything other than the conditions for selling pieces, some of the labor movement to the monarchist or reformist male opposition at the lowest prices? Of course, there is no other credibility or issue, the imposition of these demands, with all their inferiority and limitations on the bourgeoisie, requires a level of fielding and a display of the power of the workers' movement. You're not just taking any steps to help organize this power that you're against. Sheet by sheet your record has been to close the dam on the way to this type of fielding and organization of the power of the working mass. You are a bunch of reformers, you are not a fight against wage-slavery, you have never, in any period, done so, in the same charter, whatever you have said, every point you have made is a clear proof of this orientation. Let's get back to the question. What is the use of demands that are not to be imposed on the bourgeoisie and its government with the organized power of the national, council and radical working class? The answer is clear, the only property of these charters is to present them to the ruling bourgeoisie or the opposition for bargaining, to sell the workers' power and the labor movement at all levels. Nothing else comes out of your past. Is it not that in the last five months of the uprising, the eulogies of Nastuh are the slogans of meta-tabloids, the misleading "woman, life, freedom" or the more reactionary slogans of "Reclaim life"!! You've been "reclaiming Iran" and all that. During these months, which radical and anti-capitalist rhetoric have you shared with the working class, which steps have you taken to help the class ranks of workers' anti-capitalists?
6. Not all of you are the same. Until now, haft tappeh workers have denied their knowledge of the setting of such a text, some people have no background and no familiar worker identity. Most of you are Abu Abajama'i, a history of syndicated reformism. Among the signatories, the Council for the Organization of Oil Contract workers' protests has had a more or less different situation. His record is not one of the ages of others, he has carried many shortcomings, shortcomings that have been criticized by our class radicals and finally persuaded by charter writers. However, the oil contract workers have a other background, our present critique is a critique of the entire charter and charter writers, among them, but we declare that many points of this critique are not true of their years-long struggle. The expectation of the workers is aware that they will be an influential and radical force to promote iran's labor day movement to a nationwide anti-capitalist council power.
Anti-capitalist workers
February 1401
Source in Farsi: http://alayhesarmaye.com/مطالبات-حداقلی-یا-مناقصه-فروش-دستاو/