Iran: Arbitrary arrest/possible prisoner Mansour Ossanlu

[Shahab-3]

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE130862007

Further Information on Arbitrary Arrest: Mansour Ossanlu

July 13, 2007
Amnesty International
Urgent Action


IRAN Mansour Ossanlu (m), Head of Union of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company. Trade unionist Mansour Ossanlu, who had been released in December, was detained on 10 July. He was reportedly pushed into a car at around 7pm by men in plain clothes who beat him. On 12 July it was reported that he was being held in Section 209 of Evin Prison in Tehran.

He had spent eight months in detention between December 2005 and August 2006, and a further month between November and December 2006 in connection with his activities as head of the Union of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company (Sherkat-e Vahed), and was facing trial. He had recently travelled to Europe to build international support for an independent trades union movement in Iran.

Amnesty International believes he is a prisoner of conscience, held solely on account of his peaceful trades union activities, who should be released immediately and unconditionally.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The Union of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company is said to have been founded in 1979 and resumed activities in 2004 after a 25-year ban. It is still not legally recognised.

Iran is a State Party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, of which Article 22 (1) states: "Everyone shall have the right to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his interests." Article 26 of Iran’s Constitution states: "The formation of parties, societies, political or professional associations … is permitted provided they do not violate the principles of independence, freedom, national unity, the criteria of Islam, or the basis of the Islamic republic. No one may be prevented from participating in the aforementioned groups, or be compelled to participate in them."

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible, in Persian, Arabic, English, French or your own language:
- asking why Mansour Ossanlu was rearrested on 10 July, and asking for details of any charges he is facing;
- expressing concern that he appears to be held solely on account of his peaceful trade union activities, and calling on the authorities to release him immediately and unconditionally;
- in the meantime, calling on the authorities to ensure that he is given immediate and regular access to his lawyers, and his family;
- expressing concern at reports that Mansour Ossanlu was beaten during his arrest and urging that these reports be fully investigated, with anyone found responsible for abuses brought to justice and given a fair trial;
- calling for him to be given immediate access to any medical treatment he may require;
- reminding the authorities of their obligations under the ICCPR, Article 22 (1) of which provides for the right to form and join trade unions.

APPEALS TO:

Minister of Intelligence
Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie
Ministry of Intelligence, Second Negarestan Street, Pasdaran Avenue, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Email: iranprobe@iranprobe.com
Salutation: Your Excellency

Head of the Judiciary
Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi
Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Justice Building, Panzdah-Khordad Square, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Fax: +98 21 3390 4986 (please keep trying)
Email: info@dadgostary-tehran.ir (In the subject line: FAO Ayatollah Shahroudi)
Salutation: Your Excellency

COPIES TO:

President
His Excellency Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
The Presidency, Palestine Avenue, Azerbaijan Intersection, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Fax: + 981 6 674 790 (Via Foreign Ministry. Mark "Please forward to H.E. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad")
Email: dr-ahmadinejad@president.ir
via website: www.president.ir/email
Salutation: Your Excellency

Head of the Parliamentary Article 90 Commission
Mohammad Reza Faker
Majles-e Shoura-ye Eslami
Baharestan Square, Tehran, Iran
Fax: + 98 21 3355 6408

and to diplomatic representatives of Iran accredited to your country.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY. Check with the International Secretariat, or your section office, if sending appeals after 24 August 2007.

[Shahab-3]

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=98479&d=14&m=7&y=2007

July 14, 2007
Arab News
Amir Taheri

One of Iran’s most popular civil society leaders was abducted in Tehran on Tuesday after chairing a meeting of trade unionists. The scene was reminiscent of spy stories about the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Mansour Osanloo, the 48-year-old president of the Union of Bus Drivers (SKSV), had just stepped off a bus when a group of bearded men emerged from a gray metallic Peugeot car and attacked him with clubs and knuckle-dusters.

Shouting, “You are an enemy of Islam”, the attackers pushed Osanloo into the Peugeot and drove away. Passengers on the bus, which had stopped as the scene started, tried to restrain the attackers but were held back at gunpoint.

According to Osanloo’s friends and relatives, secret service agents had followed him round the clock since his return from a visit to Europe last month. During that visit, Osanloo addressed a number of international labor meetings in London, Brussels and Geneva.

According to witnesses, Osanloo was severely beaten, and his attackers continued to beat him even after they had forced him into their car. Osanloo revealed his leadership capacities in 2004 when he helped create one of the first independent trade unions in Iran since the seizure of power by the mullahs in 1979. Later, he led two successful strikes by transport workers and forced the management of the state-owned bus company to offer concessions.

The example he set has been followed by other workers who have created over 400 independent trade unions with an estimated membership of 1.5 million. Earlier this year, the independent unions set up a new mechanism known as Workers’ Organizations and Activists Coordinating Council (WOACC) to foster unity of action. On May 1, International Labor Day, WOACC succeeded in holding the first independent workers’ march in Tehran and 11 other major cities since 1979.

This is not the first time that Osanloo, regarded by some as “Iran’s Lech Walesa”, after the Polish trade union leader who helped end Communist rule in his country, is abducted by paramilitaries working for the government. Osanloo has also been imprisoned on two occasions, including a spell at the notorious Evin prison.

While Osanloo has been careful not to give Iran’s emerging labor movement a political coloring, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regards the union leader as a potential threat.

Workers organized in independent trade unions still represent no more than five percent of wage earners in Iran. The majority of Iranian workers are either not unionized or drafted as members of unions controlled by government through so-called “Islamic Committees.”

Nevertheless, the authorities are concerned that more workers might join independent unions or set up new free unions, shaking off government control. One key demand of workers is that the “Islamic Committees” set up in workshops and offices be abolished and the mullahs that head them returned to the mosques.

The authorities are especially angry with Osanloo because of his success in mobilizing international support for the Iranian labor movement. Earlier this year the authorities released Osanloo from prison and allowed him to travel to Europe to attend the annual conference of the International Transport Workers Federation.

According to Osanloo’s friends, the authorities had hoped that he would seize the opportunity to stay in Europe and join former internal dissidents who have become exiles.

However, Osanloo had no intention of disappearing in exile.

In London, he made a passionate appeal to workers throughout the world to support their Iranian counterparts in their quest for decent wages, human working conditions and freedom of association. In Brussels he met the leaders of the General Council of the International Trades Union Conference and managed to “open their eyes to the realities of the workers’ conditions in the Islamic Republic”, according to one of his friends in Tehran.

Since the mullahs seized power in Tehran, Western trade unions have been reluctant to support Iranian workers. For almost a quarter of a century appeals to Western labor leaders, including those in the United States, to support their Iranian working class brethren had fallen on deaf ears, because the Tehran regime was regarded as a revolutionary setup backed by the “toiling masses.”

Osanloo’s success was to alter that perception and persuade at least some Western trade unionists not to support the Khomeinist regime in its repression of Iranian workers. (David Cockroft, general secretary of the International Transport Workers Federation to which the SKSV is affiliated, has called on the Islamic republic to “secure the immediate release of Mansour Osanloo”.)

Osanloo also succeeded in persuading the leadership of the International Labor Organization (ILO) of which Iran is full member, to oppose the new draft Labor Code presented by Ahmadinejad. The draft abolishes virtually every right won by Iranian workers over decades of struggle, and imposes rules that WOACC has described as “conditions for slave labor, not employment in a free society.”

Is Osanloo’s abduction related to the meeting he had just chaired? It is too early to tell. However, the meeting did two things that the authorities do not like.

First, it condemned an announcement by the government that six members of the SKSV leadership have been “dismissed” and taken into custody. Secondly, it refused a government demand that bus drivers assume responsibility for imposing stricter “hijab” rules by keeping women passengers limited to the two back seats of the bus and forcing women “not dressed according Islamic codes” to disembark.

Osanloo told the meeting that it was not up to the government to decide who should lead the union, and called for the immediate release of his colleagues. He also recalled that a bus driver’s task was to drive his passengers to their destinations safely and not to select them according to what they wear.

All those who know Osanloo know that he is a voice for wisdom, moderation and peaceful change in a society ridden by potentially explosive contradictions. To silence that voice would be a tragic loss for anyone interested in Iran’s future.