The second round of teachers’ sit-in, which began on November 13 across Iran including various cities and villages of Kurdistan, still continues despite the pressures and threats of Iranian security forces.
Several Kurdish teachers participating in this sit-in have told Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) that the majority of schools in various cities and villages of Kurdistan have participated in this sit-in. This sit-in, which followed the call of the Coordination Council of Iranian Teachers’ Union in protest to the poor living condition of teachers as well as the privatisation policies of the Ministry of Education and Training, detaining teachers and the scheme of full-time teachers, has been running for the past two days.
The first round of this sit-in was held on Oct 15 and 16 with the call of the Coordination Council of Iranian Teachers’ Union. Teachers in many regions of Iran carried out a sit-in at schools while holding up signs bearing slogans such as “Free education for all citizens”, “Educational justice” and “granting higher education certificates to teachers”, “salary increase in proportion to inflation”, “comprehensive insurance” “and” ending the imprisonment of teachers”.
After the first round of this sit-in, in which many teachers from different schools in Kurdistan participated, officials of the Ministry of Education and Training in Kermanshah and Sanandaj had met with the headteachers of various schools in Sanandaj and Kermanshah to prevent the second round of sit-in in any way possible.
According to one of the headteachers, who was present at one of these meetings, the security organisations have warned the officials of Ministry of Education & Training that a sit-in would not be in the interest of teachers and it will lead to problems for the teachers in future, especially given the sensitive situation of security in Kurdistan.
This headteacher added that they had been asked to disclose the names of the teachers participating in the sit-in to the Education and Training Directorate. However, reports from schools in Kermanshah, Islamabad, Kamyaran, Sanandaj, Marivan, Saqqez, Ghorveh, Divandareh, Bukan, Mahabad and Orumiyeh have confirmed that teachers have carried out sit-in at school offices. Moreover, retired teachers have joined teachers’ sit-in at school offices.
It is noteworthy that, following the first round of teachers’ sit-in, six teachers Tahir Ghaderzadeh, Suleiman Abdi, Seyyed Ali Hosseini, Ahmad Ghaderi, Hamid Yazdani and Khalid Abdollahi were summoned and interrogated by the intelligence police in Saqqez. Consequently, an indictment was filed against these teachers on charges of disrupting public order. However, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Saqqez Islamic Revolutionary Court suspended the prosecution of these teachers on the basis that they had not disrupted the public order by participating in the sit-in.
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