Spring of freedom

Esmail Bakhshi, worker at Haft Tapeh sugarcane factory  Esmail Bakhshi, one of the spokespersons for the protesting workers of Haft Tapeh Sugarcane Agro Industrial Company in the Khuzestan province, described the horrible conditions of his incarceration in an open letter published on his Instagram page, addressed to Mahmoud Alavi, the head of the notorious Ministry of Intelligence & Security (MOIS). According to Bakhshi, during the first days of his incarceration, he was tortured to the brink of death without any reason and was beaten so violently that he couldn’t move for 72 hours. Esmail Bakhshi was arrested on November 18, 2018, by MOIS during the peaceful labor protests of the workers of Iran’s largest sugarcane factory. The workers of Haft Tapeh were protesting against months-overdue wages and problems caused by the privatization of the company. In his letter, Bakhshi describes that while beating him, his torturers also insulted him and attacked him with prof...

Students held a large gathering today in the campus of the Tehran Azad University’s Science and Research Department in protest to the unaccountability of university officials on the death of 10 people killed in a bus  accident  in the mountainous regions of the capital. The bus was carrying 30 students along a mountainous road within the science research campus of the Islamic Azad University in northwestern Tehran when it came off the road and hit a concrete column on Christmas day. The protesters chanted against university officials demanding their resignation. “Velayati shame on you, abandon the university,” they chanted addressing Ali Akbar  Velayati , the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the  Azad Islamic University . The former Minister of Foreign Affairs and MP, who currently holds 37 official simultaneous  posts including 23 educational/medical positions, nine political positions and 6 cultural positions, is reportedly close to Iran’s Supre...