Iranian pensioners have regularly taken to the streets in recent years to demand an end to corruption, free access to health care, and improvements to pensions which have been decimated by inflation. On Wednesday 10 January thousands of retired teachers demonstrated for better pensions and the release of jailed teacher trade union activists.
Protests across Iran’s strategically important oil and gas sectors have been running since early September 2023. Workers are demanding pay increases,
Iran’s currency, the rial, fell by 5% after the US-UK strikes on the Yemeni Houthi movement as fears grow of a major regional war. That will add to consumer price inflation, which has been running at 50% for several years.
The Iranian currency has fallen 12-fold against the dollar since 2018 when the Trump government in the US pulled out of the nuclear deal and imposed banking and oil export sanctions on Iran.
Released on bail
However, two brave Iranian journalists, Niloofar Hamedi and Elahah Mohammadi, have been granted “temporary release” from prison.
The women were released on bail pending an appeal against sentences of 13 and 12 years, respectively, for reporting on the murder of Mahsa Jina Amini by Iran’s “morality police” in September 2022.
They were pictured after leaving Tehran’s notorious Evin prison on 14 January. They have spent the last 17 months in detention for simply doing their jobs and telling the truth about the killing.
Jina Amini was taken into custody for allegedly breaking Iran’s mandatory headscarf rules, and Hamedi took a photograph of Jina lying in a coma in hospital, being hugged by her parents, after being beaten by police.
Mohammadi was arrested for covering Amini’s funeral in Saghez in the Kurdish north west of Iran. Jina Amini’s murder sparked a mass street movement, Women, Life, Freedom in opposition to Iran’s misogynistic laws and the vicious clerical regime.
In the months that followed over 550 protesters were killed, many were jailed and tortured, at least seven have been executed, and 22,000 were arrested as the Mullahs used violent repression against the movement.
In December Jina’s parents and brother were prevented from travelling to receive the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought awarded in memory of Jina.
Roya Heshmati, a 33-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, announced on Facebook that she had been whipped 74 times on her back for posting a picture of herself walking down a Tehran street without a hijab. The punishment was carried out on 3 January. For her “crime,” which took place in April 2023, she was held for 11 days and charged with propaganda against the establishment, violating public decency and order and disseminating immoral social media content.
Originally, and outrageously, she was sentenced to 13 years in prison on those charges. On appeal her sentence was reduced, and she was banned from leaving the country for three years, fined, and sentenced to 74 lashes. Heshmati detailed the experience on her social media. During the punishment she refused to wear a hijab and had to be handcuffed in order for women officials to forcibly cover her hair.
Heshmati described being whipped in front of a judge in a room she described as a “medieval torture chamber”. During the ordeal she chanted the words of a popular song from the Women, Life, Freedom movement: “In the name of women, in the name of life, the clothes of freedom are torn, our black night will dawn.”
Elections
Iran is heading towards elections for its fake parliament which will take place on 1 March. All but the most hardline of regime supporters have been excluded from the ballot. So-called “reformist” and “moderate” clerics and Islamists have been purged. Already, in November 2023, 28% of the prospective candidates who applied to stand for the 290-seat parliament had been disqualified after “initial screening.”
A former President, Hassan Rouhani, has suggested the turnout in March will be very low. Apparently in elections held in 2020 before the recent wave of protests, the turnout averaged around 40%. But in some areas where there has been significant opposition to the regime, like the industrial areas round Karaj, near Tehran, turnout was under 5%.
Recent legislation raised the retirement age for men to 62 years. Social security contributions must also now be paid for 42 years by men, before qualifying for a full pension.