Labor Activist Parvin Mohammadi Summoned to Execute One-Year Prison Sentence
The Free Union of Iranian Workers announced that Parvin Mohammadi, a member of the union’s board of directors, has been summoned to execute a one-year prison sentence.
Parvin Mohammadi is a well-known labor activist who has been arrested and imprisoned multiple times in recent years.
According to the Free Union of Iranian Workers’ Telegram channel, Branch One of the Enforcement of Sentences of the General and Revolutionary Prosecutor’s Office in District 33 of Tehran has issued a notice requiring Parvin Mohammadi to “report to this branch within five days” to execute “a one-year prison sentence.”
On March 2, 2021 (11 Esfand 1399), Ms. Mohammadi’s lawyer announced that the verdict in this case was issued “in absentia.” According to her, this case dates back to 2017 (1396), and Parvin Mohammadi was sentenced to one year in prison for “propaganda against the system” based on several speeches she gave to gatherings of retired workers and an interview about the Plasco building fire.
According to the Free Union of Iranian Workers’ report, Ms. Mohammadi has been “banned from leaving the country” since last year.
The Free Union of Iranian Workers, condemning the issuance of the one-year prison sentence and the notice to execute this sentence for Parvin Mohammadi, has described it as “a completely illegal action and an order from security agencies to the judiciary.” The union stated that she “has neither been arrested, nor has a case file been created, nor has any interrogation, investigation, or court trial been held with her presence.”
This union, questioning the judicial process of this case, has emphasized that “the reasons and manner of issuing this sentence” should be registered in “the Thaana system” in accordance with the law, which has not happened. On this basis, “Parvin Mohammadi has so far refrained from reporting to Branch One of the Enforcement of Sentences.”
Parvin Mohammadi, coinciding with International Workers’ Day, and noting that in the Islamic Republic “the workforce and the value of workers’ wages” are worthless, told the Persian service of Voice of America that workers over the past 42 years have accumulated demands, none of which they have achieved, and every day new and more serious demands are added to their previous ones.
Worker protests and strikes in Iran have continued despite the arrest and suppression of labor activists in recent months and years.
Including in recent days when gatherings of retired steelworkers took place in Tehran, Ahvaz, and Isfahan to protest the non-implementation of their wage and livelihood demands, as well as a strike by workers at the Sungun Copper Complex in Varzeghan in East Azerbaijan Province.
Source: Voice of America
