Following the renewed protest of Haft Tappeh workers, four labor activists were arrested.

Reports indicate that four Haft Tappeh sugarcane workers were arrested by police forces after attending a protest rally on Thursday, November 29.

The Haft Tappeh Workers' Union announced the news that workers from various industrial departments of Haft Tappeh Company were discussing with company officials in support of their colleagues who had not been paid their overtime for July and August, when the situation escalated into a crisis due to the intervention of law enforcement forces.

Esmaeil Bakhshi, a labor activist who himself was imprisoned for several months following the Haft Tappeh protests, wrote in a tweet about the arrests that the police "raided the homes of three Haft Tappeh labor activists, Yousef Bahmani, Hamid Mombini, and Masoud Hayuri, and arrested them without prior notice."

While months of protests by Haft Tappeh workers have not addressed their conditions, Omid Asadbeigi, the former CEO of Haft Tappeh Sugarcane, is the primary defendant in a case of disrupting the currency and monetary system, in which his indictment includes the charge of organized leadership in disrupting the country's currency and monetary system through major currency smuggling and unauthorized transactions in government currencies.

In recent years, the Islamic Republic's authorities have had security clashes with union protests, including those of Haft Tappeh workers, and have sentenced some protesting workers and members of the Haft Tappeh workers' union, including labor activist Ali Nejati, to long prison terms.

The United States has repeatedly condemned Iran's security crackdown on workers. The US State Department's Persian Twitter account recently posted a message saying that "the Islamic Republic regime could have paid the salaries of workers in Iran with the money it spent in Syria."

Source: Voice of America