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16 July, 2007
Mansour Osanloo, the leader of the Tehran bus workers’ union, Sherkat-e Vahed (SKSV), was again arrested by Iran’s secret police, following a June European tour that included meetings at the ILO International Labour Conference. Osanloo was abducted on 10 July after he stepped off a bus.
Witnesses said he was beaten before being forced into a silver Peugeot and driven off. At first, Iranian authorities denied any knowledge of his whereabouts. But after two days, a Revolutionary Court judge acknowledged he was being held in the dreaded Evin prison, a jail that he had been in last year.
Supporters of Osanloo in Tehran said the secret police has followed him around the clock since his return from Europe in late June. He spoke in Geneva at the ILO, London, and Brussels, where he addressed the General Council of the ITUC. At the ILO’s annual conference, he said it was essential that the ILO and all of civil society oppose a draft labour code being proposed by the Islamic government in Iran. The law, if passed, would abolish nearly all workers’ rights gained in the past.
The Labour Conference heard how the Iranian government brutally assaulted and then arrested activists during a 1 May celebration. And it heard from Osanloo that SKVS the union refuses to enforce a government decree limiting women passengers to the back seats of Tehran and Suburbs buses, and only if they are wearing sanctioned attire.
David Cockroft, general secretary of The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), which hosted Osanloo in London, said last week, “Three weeks ago we were applauding Mansour. One week ago we were successfully campaigning to have his deputy released from another unjustified arrest. This week we are profoundly worried about his physical safety and want to see Mansour freed and among his friends and family as quickly as possible.”
It marks the third time that Mansour Osanloo, 47, has been detained. In 2004, he helped form one of the first free trade unions since Iran’s Islamic Republic was born in 1979. He led two successful strikes by transit workers that gave them a level of rights. But he was arrested twice in 2006, the latest a 19 December incarceration in which he was held for 22 days.
The ICEM, along with the rest of the global labour movement, calls for immediate release of Mansour Osanloo from this latest, 10 July, unwarranted arrest.