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Jamshid Chalangi:
Today we celebrate the International Workers’ Day and respect it along with millions of workers who through their daily hard labour make our world a better place.
However, forty years after the Khomeini regime came to power in Iran with his empty promises, we will try to find out what is the plight of Iranian workers under the country’s current economic crisis.
Many Iranian workers have not received their salaries for months, many others have been jailed for protesting against the regime’s economic policies andmismanagement of their factories and worker Sattar Beheshti has been killed in prison.
Our guests tonight to discuss these issues are former member of National Front of Iran Mr Houshang Kordestani and one of the spokespersons of Iran’s Constitutional Party, Mr Foad Pashaie.
Houshang Kordestani:
Undoubtedly these last forty years have been the darkest chapter in the history of Iran, even though the man who wanted to become the next president (Mir Hossein Mousavi) had referred to Khomeini’s rule as “the golden age”.
I do not wish to raise points of differences at this stage when we all need to unite to free Iran. However, those of us Iranians who live in exile in democratic countries fail to come to some kind of agreed plan and strategy for this purpose every time we sit down to find them.
Our workers live in terrible conditions and their lives are in constant danger due to poverty, lack of healthcare and the regime’s repression.
When Khomeini calls Iran’s patriots as “infidels” and issues fatwa against their lives, then you can imagine what conditions our workers live under.
Foad Pashaie:
If we look at our country and its people, they are the same as they were fortyyears ago. It is only the management of the system that has changed hands and has fallen under the control of a bunch of ignorant and uneducated people whose only interest is to make wealth for themselves.
To run a country you must rely on the expertise of the educated elites and consultants in the fields of industries, technologies and manufacturing.
You can hardly find one of these people in the ruling regime in Iran and as a result our country that was ahead of South Korea forty years ago is now a bankrupted nation in its economy and industries.
