Iran Bus Drivers Strike - Regime Cracks Down

Where were the New York Times (no mention) and Washington Post (part of one column) and other major papers on this one? The MSM leaves it up to an opinion writer to publish a piece in the Wall Street Journal to bring us some of the most important news from Iran. This should have been front-page news the day it happened. For shame.

Elsewhere: BBC: nothing, Boston Globe: nothing, Chicago Tribune: nothing, LA Times: nothing, Washington Times: nothing, CS Monitor: nothing. Instead, this is only being reported on Iran or labor-movement niche sites (see Google News result).

In brief: the Revolution of 1979 outlawed unions. In 2004, the Union of Workers of the United Bus Company of Tehran re-organized, demanding better better uniforms, a pay raise, etc. Rather than negotiate, the government has chosen to terrorize the union with goons and secret police.

Excerpts from Roya Hakakian's article:

The executive committee's first meeting came under fire. Baton-wielding thugs shouting "The bus syndicate, the monarchs' hideout!" charged in, set their office on fire, beat everyone in attendance, and promised to cut off the tongue of [Mansour] Ossanloo if he continued his activities. As a sign of their seriousness, they ran a blade over his tongue, shaving a layer off. He has spoken with a lisp ever since...

Days before the strike, several members of the executive committee were summoned to appear before the Revolutionary Court, where they were ordered to call off the strike. When they refused, they were arrested and taken to prison. The officials had declared the strike illegal and threatened to fire all participants. In the days that followed, security forces launched mass arrests of the union members. Those who showed up on the day of the strike were beaten while watching members of the security forces cross their picket line to take their places behind the wheels. In the last week of January, an estimated 1,000 workers were arrested and taken into prison. Though hundreds were released upon signing guarantees that they would not participate in any strikes again, and received permission from the Revolutionary Court to return to work, the company itself refuses to let them back. On the eve of the Iranian New Year, hundreds of these workers have become unemployed. The six union leaders remain in prison incommunicado...

What did enlightened people do to support the strikers? Very little. Most Iranian intellectuals, former Marxist activists included, were consumed by polite electronic debates over the Dutch cartoons. Hundreds of striking drivers were arrested, as the cameras of the world's biggest news agencies shot images of the couple of dozen government-paid hoodlums throwing rocks at the Danish embassy in Tehran. Wives and children, even distant relatives of the activists, were hauled off into detention to force the union leaders to turn themselves in, as India's Communist Party threatened to leave the ruling coalition in New Delhi if India voted to refer Iran to the Security Council. Clearly, workers of the world ought to postpone uniting until other scores are settled.

This should have been reported. The MSM, for fear of deviating from its "plotline" on Iran, kept from us a happening that is far more important to the future of the Middle East than the cartoon brouhaha. I don't share with some the pretense that bloggers can take the place of professional, organized reporting, but we can and will blow the whistle when we see that they've supressed something vitally important.