Retirees’ Gathering for Third Consecutive Day; “Only in the Street We Can Get Our Rights”

Reports also indicate that protest gatherings were held in Tehran, Yazd, Kermanshah, Shush, and Haft Tappeh.

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, retirees also gathered in several cities including Mashhad, Shushtar, Ilam, Yazd, Qazvin, Karaj, Bandar Abbas, Ahvaz, cities in Lorestan Province including Khorramabad and Dorud, Tabriz, Sirjan, Kermanshah, Shush, Haft Tappeh, Abadan, Isfahan, and Kerman.

The recent wave of Social Security retirees’ protests began after the government announced on June 5, a public holiday, that it would only increase the pensions of non-minimum wage earners by 10 percent.

Social Security retirees say that salaries at other income levels besides minimum wage earners were supposed to increase by 38 percent plus 515 thousand tomans in the current year, but this law was rejected and according to published reports, only 10 percent is being added to salaries, which does not match the severe inflation in the country.

Retirees and pensioners, alongside teachers and workers in recent years, have repeatedly held protest gatherings in protest against their living conditions and the government’s disregard for their demands, but most of these protests have faced security confrontations.

These gatherings are being held at a time when the leader of the Islamic Republic in this week in a speech attributed “public protests” to “enemies” and claimed that everyone in the country is “satisfied” with the government and the Islamic Republic system.