Two teachers imprisoned in Evin prison react to the burning of students in Zahedan

Mahmoud Beheshti Langroudi and Esmail Abdi, two imprisoned teachers, have warned of popular uprisings and the “Tunisization” of Iran in response to a school fire in Zahedan. The recent fire incident at the “Aswah Hasanah” school resulted in the deaths of four students.

Mahmoud Beheshti Langroudi and Esmail Abdi, two teachers serving their sentences in Evin Prison on security charges, reacted to the recent fire at a school in Zahedan that killed four female students in a note on Monday, December 24, and warned of the consequences of such incidents.

On the morning of December 17, a fire broke out at the "Aswah Hasanah" preschool center in Zahedan, seriously injuring four female students, after which all four children died in the hospital.

The text of the note from two imprisoned teachers in response to this incident, read by Mahmoud Beheshti Langroodi in a call with "Insaf News", has been published by this news site.

In their note, Mahmoud Beheshti Langroodi and Ismail Abdi, while reviewing several fire incidents with dozens of victims since 1997 in a number of schools in the country, asked, among other things: "Really, why is the problem of school heating equipment not being solved? Education officials say the main problem is the lack of appropriate budget allocation for standardizing heating equipment; the Minister of Education claims that about 105,000 classrooms across the country still lack standard heating equipment and calls on all people to cooperate in solving this problem."

The two imprisoned teachers then wrote in response to the question, "Where is the education budget spent?": "Education officials claim that nearly 98 percent of the education budget is spent on current issues, especially personnel salaries, and in fact, the remaining amount cannot meet the needs of other schools. Moreover, this annual budget is always facing a deficit, and sometimes they even have trouble paying teachers' minimum salaries."

Iranian teachers' "$200" salaries

In another part of their note, Mr. Beheshti Langroodi and Mr. Abdi compared the legal status of Iranian teachers with that of other countries and estimated the monthly salary of Iranian teachers at around $200, “calculating the dollar to 10,000 Tomans.” This is while, according to them, for example, teachers in Luxembourg receive between $7,000 and $14,000, teachers in the United Arab Emirates between $2,500 and $6,000, and even teachers in China between $300 and $1,000 per month.

According to the two imprisoned teachers, teachers in Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and Bahrain also earn up to four times more than Iranian teachers, and Afghanistan is the only country where teachers' salaries were lower than Iranian teachers' salaries "until the recent price increases."

In another part of their note, Mahmoud Beheshti Langroodi and Esmail Abdi raise the question, "Where is the country's budget really spent?" and, for example, take a look at the salaries and benefits of members of the Islamic Consultative Assembly in 2016 and the budgets of some religious institutions this year (2018).

According to the estimates of these two political prisoners, the annual salaries and benefits of representatives, including salaries, grants, "overtime and extraordinary work and benefits," housing costs, companions, offices, "gifts," "domestic and international travel tickets," and other welfare costs for the staff and guards of the Iranian Parliament, amounted to 280 billion Tomans.

Huge budgets for religious institutions

The two imprisoned teachers also estimated the budget of some religious institutions in Iran at 1467 billion tomans in their note. According to their writing, this amount was allocated for “supporting the livelihood of students and clerics,” Al-Mustafa Community, “insurance premiums for unemployed seminary students,” “Shahid, Imam Khomeini, and Velayat universities,” and “Farabi Campus and Qom University and Imam Educational Institute” in 2018.

Mahmoud Beheshti Langroodi and Esmail Abdi then looked at the “behind-the-scenes issues of the Iranian economy” and, citing “all official and reliable news,” pointed out the billions of dollars spent on these “behind-the-scenes” in the areas of car imports, allocation of foreign exchange at the official rate, distribution of coins and currency, smuggling of goods, financial institutions, and bank arrears. They wrote, among other things: “Behind the scenes means corruption; widespread corruption that has penetrated all pillars of the country’s economy and, like termites, is crumbling and destroying all foundations and pillars, leading the country to destruction.”

The two union activists added: "The above-mentioned issues, in addition to astronomical salaries and properties, embezzlement of tens of billions of Tomans, domestic and foreign waste, gratuitous aid to neighbors, etc., have all caused the country to face the problem of allocating funds for matters such as providing standard heating equipment for students in this land. And precisely during the periods when officials were busy dealing with critics and dissidents and groups such as workers, teachers, lawyers, students, journalists, etc., economic corruptors were peacefully destroying the fabric of the country's economy, and the result is the country's current situation."

Mr. Beheshti Langroodi and Mr. Abdi then point to a joint statement by Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, with “other scholars,” which stated, among other things: “If the Iranian nation submits to the rulings of Islam and asks governments to implement the Islamic financial program in accordance with the views of Islamic scholars, the entire nation will live in prosperity and comfort.”

The two imprisoned teachers then asked: "Why, after 40 years since the victory of the revolution, not only has the promise of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran not been fulfilled, but corruption, poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and class divide have spread to such an extent that it is enough to compare the living conditions of the people of northern Tehran, not with the conditions of the people of Zahedan and the deprived areas of the country, but with the south of Tehran itself, to reveal what has happened to the people and how far corruption has penetrated?"

"No system can survive with corruption and oppression"

After this introduction, Mahmoud Beheshti Langroudi and Ismail Abdi have called on those who "fear people from becoming Syrian" to themselves prevent Iran from "becoming Tunisian."

The two imprisoned teachers are referring to a series of events that led to the fall of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia after a Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire, and at the same time swept a large part of the Arab world under the banner of the “Arab Spring.” According to Beheshti Langroudi and Abdi, after the self-immolation of the Tunisian street vendor in front of the city hall, “13 people set themselves on fire in other Arab countries, and as a result, the governments of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Mohammed Gaddafi in Libya, and Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen were overthrown, and the governments of Algeria, Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Kuwait, Mauritania, and Morocco were forced to make concessions to the protesters and introduce reforms in their own governance.”

The two union activists then warned that "historical and divine traditions testify to the fact that no system with corruption and oppression will ever last, and Iran is no exception to this rule, and as the Quran says, when "the time comes, it will not be delayed an hour, nor will it be advanced an hour."

Mahmoud Beheshti Langroodi and Esmail Abdi also considered the widespread public protests in nearly 100 Iranian cities in January 2017 as a "warning" to "listen to the people's voices and try to correct procedures and mistakes, compensate for shortcomings, and remove dissatisfaction." At the same time, they emphasized: "However, after a year of the aforementioned incidents and contrary to some promises, no serious decision to reform matters is observed, and none of the reformist, moderate, or fundamentalist movements have presented a specific plan to restore trust in the people, and apparently infiltrating and maintaining power is the only specific strategy of the political movements ruling the institutions."

The two imprisoned teachers finally warned in their note: "If lessons are not learned from the incidents and experiences of other countries in the few remaining opportunities, it will not be far-fetched to expect that events will occur that are neither in the best interests of the nation nor in the best interests of the country and the authorities."

Mahmoud Beheshti Langroudi, a senior member of the board of directors of the Iranian Teachers’ Union, and Esmail Abdi, the union’s secretary, were sentenced to five and six years in prison, respectively, and are currently serving their sentences in Evin Prison. The imprisoned teachers face security charges such as “gathering and colluding against national security” and “propaganda against the regime.”

Previously, the two imprisoned teachers, the Coordination Council of Educators' Unions, the Iranian Teachers' Unions, and the Central Bar Association had warned about the poor condition of educational facilities in the country's deprived provinces, demanding accountability from the authorities regarding the fire at the "Asveh Hasaneh" school in Zahedan and the "standardization" of schools.

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