Tehran marketers gather and march to protest against the increase in the price of currency
A day after the protest rally of mobile phone sellers in Tehran, market vendors in the capital also stopped working in protest of the recession, the volatility of the foreign exchange market, and the lack of customers due to high prices. There have been reports of clashes between the police and the protesting crowd.
On Monday (June 25), a large portion of Tehran's bazaars stopped working and held a rally and march in protest of the stagnation prevailing in the market, the unprecedented fluctuation of the exchange rate, and the lack of customers caused by the increase in prices. The protest movement of the capital's bazaars came a day after the gathering of mobile phone sellers in the Alaeddin and Charsou Passages in Tehran.
Videos received by Deutsche Welle Persian, as well as videos posted on social media, show images of merchants and protesting crowds shouting slogans such as "Close, close, we are all in this together," calling on other market owners to close their shops.
The Fars News Agency also reported that initially, "cloth sellers and market vendors in the Grand Bazaar, Charsouq, and Saray Qaysariyeh" closed their shops, and after them, other market vendors closed their shops and stopped working and joined the protesters.
According to Fars, police forces are also “present at the scene and have created order and calm, paving the way for a peaceful and professional gathering of bazaars.” However, some other reports have reported clashes between police officers and bazaars.
This news agency close to the IRGC, citing its reporter's observations, wrote: "In the Amin-e-Hazr market, where household appliances are sold, some marketers say that because we don't know what will happen to the dollar, we either don't sell the goods to the customer or we first take an advance payment from him and stipulate with him that if the goods required by the factory become more expensive, he must accept the price difference. In these circumstances, we cannot sell the available goods to the people, because we don't know at what dollar rate we should buy goods to supply the goods sold."
According to ISNA news agency, the presence of protesters on the main street of the bazaar (15 Khordad Street) has “created a crowd.” According to the same report, some of the protesting bazaars have declared their movement “spontaneous and in response to the increasing inflation in the foreign exchange market.” According to the bazaars, during the fluctuations in the foreign exchange market over the past month, their business has faced a slump.
Abdullah Esfandiari, the head of the Central Board of Trustees of Tehran Bazaar, told ISNA that some of the merchants in Tehran Bazaar, including the Kilo Bazaar, the small market, and the cloth sellers, were protesting, saying: "The merchants' demand is right, and they want the foreign exchange market to be clarified once and for all, and we hope that by addressing their problems, the market will return to normal tomorrow." According to Esfandiari, "The merchants in the market are protesting against the high exchange rate, fluctuations and excessive increase in its rate, instability in customs, failure to clear goods, lack of specific criteria and principles for clearing goods, etc., and considering that they cannot make any decisions and sell their goods in such circumstances, they have put their business on a semi-closed status until their tasks are clarified."
Ahmad Karimi Esfahani, Secretary General of the Islamic Associations of Guilds and Markets, also emphasized that "we had predicted the current market conditions in advance," adding: "We repeatedly gave the necessary warnings to the authorities and said that the market situation cannot be controlled with the current policy."
Protest movement of mobile phone sellers
On Sunday, following a sudden increase in the price of mobile phones, a number of mobile phone shopkeepers in Charso and Alaeddin Passage in Tehran closed their shops for a while and held a protest rally. They were protesting the sharp increase in the exchange rate in the free market and the consequent unprecedented increase in the price of mobile phones, as well as the decline in sales of their products due to the decline in people's purchasing power.
The sharp fluctuations in the foreign exchange market in recent days and months have been evident in various areas in Iran. One of these areas is the market for digital devices and goods, including mobile phones, which is said to have seen an increase of at least 30 percent.
While some domestic news agencies had announced the price of the dollar in the unofficial market yesterday as 8,700 tomans, some sources had reported it reaching 9,000 tomans.
In a report on yesterday's protest rally, Fars News Agency quoted a passerby as saying: "The situation is very bad; the price of each phone has doubled, a phone that costs 3.5 million tomans has become 7 million tomans, and the iPhone 10 has gone from 6 to 13 million." A seller also said: "Prices have risen so unreasonably that even though people know that if they don't buy it, it will be more expensive tomorrow, their logic still doesn't allow them to pay 4 million for a phone that costs 2 million."
According to local news agencies, the protesting crowd in Alaeddin and Charsu Passages, who were chanting slogans against the "10,000 Toman dollar" the previous day, dispersed after some time with police intervention, and the shopkeepers ended their protest.
Source: DW
