Successful launch of Hands Off the People of Iran in Ireland

by pat c - Hands Off the People of Iran Fri Jun 22, 2007 16:01

New signatories from Canada include sociologist professor Chris Doran (University of New Brunswick) and geographer professor Harald Bauder (University of Guelph), and, from the United States, economist professor John Roemer (Yale University), cultural critic professor Steven Shaviro (Wayne State University), historian professor Mike Davis (University of California, Irvine) and Manning Marable, professor of African-American studies at Columbia University.

And in the Far East, Marxist historian/anthropologist professor Arif Dirlik (Chinese University of Hong Kong), defence and strategic studies expert KS Balakrishnan (University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur) and psychologist Leo Marai (University of Papau New Guinea) have declared their support for Hopi.

Stephen Hughes, Labour MEP for North East England also signed up as a HOPI supporter.

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Offene Uni is a political weekend sponsored by various student groups and the trade union Verdi and took place in Berlin over June 16-17.

On the Saturday Ben Lewis, of Hands Off the People of Iran, was one of the speakers. He described the current situation both in Washington and Tehran, stressing the need for principled solidarity with the political struggles in Iran.

This led to an interesting discussion amongst the 25-30 people that attended, particularly around the possibility of military intervention in Iran and whether the threat of war was to some extent abated as a result of the two powers meeting back in May. Comrade Lewis stressed that the question was still balanced on a knife-edge and that the apparent “breakthrough” in US-Iranian relations actually had more to do with the fact that the USA and Iran have come to a reactionary consensus over the occupation regime in Iraq, which is crucial for both of their strategic interests.

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Hands Off the People of Iran’s sister organisation, the Campaign in Defence of the Iranian People (Against Imperialist War, Against the Islamic Regime) held its launch meeting on June 15 in Copenhagen. The meeting had two speakers, David Mather from Hopi, and Irene Clausen from the Danish campaign.

David Mather spoke about the struggle of car workers in the Iran Khodro plant against casualisation and lack of job security brought on by the regime’s neoliberal privatisation policies, and made more acute by the absence of any independent workers’ organisations. He described the actions of the security forces, factory police and the islamic shoras in suppressing workers, the breaching of health and safety regulations and the poor pay that forces workers to work three consecutive eight-hour shifts.

David emphasised the opposition of Iranian workers to any military intervention by the US and its allies, as well as their fears about current and future sanctions. Many workers fear that the regime will use the threat of war to increase repression, as it did in the 1980s, during the Iran -Iraq war.

Irene Clausen introduced the new Danish campaign: “We are not the friends of regimes which suppress the workers, women and students, not even if they are attacked by imperialism,” she said. “On the contrary we support the workers in Iran who are struggling for the right to form independent workers’ unions. We support the women in Iran in revolt against sexual apartheid, and we support the students who are demonstrating for freedom of expression and human rights.”

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More information and news available at:

http://www.hopoi.org/

and

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hopieire/