Supporting the People’s Struggle for Their Rights
Moving Toward Real Freedom and Equality, Not a Return to the Past
Syndicate Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Comp.
Popular protests and strikes in cities across the country have now entered their eleventh day. Despite an increasingly securitized atmosphere, the heavy deployment of police and security forces, and violent repression, the protests have continued to expand in both scope and form. According to reports, during this period at least 174 locations in 60 cities across 25 provinces have witnessed protests, and hundreds of protesters have been arrested. Tragically, during this time at least 35 protesters — including children — have been killed.
From Dey 1396 (January 2018) to Aban 1398 (November 2019) and Shahrivar 1401 (September 2022), the oppressed people of Iran have repeatedly taken to the streets to demonstrate that they reject the prevailing economic and political relations and the structures built on exploitation and inequality. These movements have emerged not to restore the past, but to build a future free from the domination of capital, a future grounded in freedom, equality, social justice, and human dignity.
While expressing our solidarity with the people’s struggles against poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and repression, we clearly and unequivocally oppose any return to a past defined by inequality, corruption, and injustice. We believe that genuine liberation can only be achieved through the conscious, organized participation and leadership of the working class and oppressed people themselves — not through the revival of backward and authoritarian forms of power imposed from above. In this context, workers, teachers, retirees, nurses, students, women, and especially young people, despite widespread repression, arrests, dismissals, and severe economic pressure, remain on the front lines of these struggles. The Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company stresses the necessity of continuing independent, conscious, and organized protests.
We have stated repeatedly — and we reiterate once again — that the path to liberation for workers and the oppressed does not lie in imposing leaders from above, nor in reliance on foreign powers, nor through factions within the ruling establishment. Rather, it lies in unity, solidarity, and the creation of independent organizations in workplaces, communities, and at the national level. We must not allow ourselves to once again become victims of power struggles and the interests of the ruling classes.
The Syndicate also strongly condemns any propaganda, justification, or support for military intervention by foreign states, including the United States and Israel. Such interventions not only lead to the destruction of civil society and the killing of civilians, but also provide yet another pretext for the continuation of violence and repression by those in power. Past experience has shown that dominant Western states place no value whatsoever on the freedom, livelihoods, or rights of the people of Iran.
We demand the immediate and unconditional release of all detainees and emphasize the necessity of identifying and prosecuting those who ordered and carried out the killing of protesters.
Long live freedom, equality, and class solidarity
The solution for the oppressed lies in unity and organization
Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company
