Iran Home To Over 120,000 Working Children: Official
The Iranian regime has admitted that at least 120,000 minors are working as child labourers, although the real figure may be far higher.
The Iranian regime has admitted that at least 120,000 minors are working as child labourers, although the real figure may be far higher.
An official at Iran’s Welfare Organization, Mohammad Reza Heydarhaie, revealed the figure of workers aged under 18 speaking to semi-official news agency ISNA on Monday.
Tens of thousands of children have had to drop out of school and try and scrimp a living to help their family survive amid the continuing economic crisis with sky-rocketing inflation of nearly 50 per cent.
Heydarhaie also admitted there has been a surge in the number of children living on garbage dumps.
Many also sell goods in the streets, clean cars or are exploited by adults as professional beggars.
Heydarhaie said: “According to the latest figures, there are a total of 120,000 minors in the country who are in child labor.”
He added: "Last year, 14,500 street children were identified, of which about 10,500 used the services of the welfare organization, and the rest did not want to receive such services."
It is believed that more than 5% of construction work in Iran is being done by children, despite the dangers.
Those employing children benefit from greater profits thanks to their lower wages.
Campaigners say that government institutions are not only reluctant to solve this problem, but are the main culprits.
Heydarhaie claimed it is against the interest of children for them to be forced off the streets by officials, saying: “It does not solve their problem,” and would put them out of reach of help from welfare organisations.
Speaking at a Ramadan-related religious ceremony last week, Ansarian whose remarks were being broadcast live on the Iranian state television told security officials: "If you have someone under arrest, do not lie to him about his imminent execution. Do not scare those who worship God."
Months of anti-regime protests and the insistence of hardliners to force hijab upon women, has led to a public debate in Iran, with some regime insiders condemning repressive policies.
The comment brought many reactions on social media, with some saying Ansarian is going his own separate way, while others pointed out that "he is now standing with the people." . Some of Iran's high-ranking clerics such as Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli also defended Ansarian.
Others posted comments by former Presidential Adviser Mohammad Ali Abtahi who recalled that when he was jailed in 2009, he was told by his interrogators that he was going to be executed the next morning.
Responding to those who said Ansarian has disembarked from the train of the Islamic Revolution, Abtahi said that if Ansarian is not on the train, it must have been hijacked.
This comes while, IRGC general Esmail Kowsari, currently a member of the Iranian parliament, denied the accounts about threatening prisoners with execution, and said: "We do not have torture in Iran. Some people complain about being tortured as soon as they are deprived of sleeping for a few hours. We do not force confessions."
Ansarian who is known to be close to regime officials and has been often seen delivering religious speeches at Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's house also talked about the hijab controversy and the regime’s harsh measures against women who defy compulsory hijab. He said he respected Iranian women and believed that 90 percent of them complied with the religious teachings about hijab.
Ansarian said: "If you want to arrest women for not observing hijab rules, come and arrest me instead." Furthermore, he called on Iranian security officials to respect prisoners, not to swear at them or humiliate them, not to beat them, and stressed that all of these behavior are strictly prohibited in Islam." He repeated, "They are haram."
Apart from Abtahi, many other former political prisoners in Iran have said that they had been subjected to mock executions as a tool of intimidation. According to Iran International, Sahand Mohammadzadeh, who was arrested during the protests last year, has said that interrogators pretended they were going to execute him. He said he was also tortured in other ways during his imprisonment which followed a seven-minute trial.
Another former prisoner, Maziar Ebrahimi who was jailed on the false charges of assassinating Iran's nuclear scientists in 2010s, revealed in 2019 in detail about having been tortured in Iranian prisons.
Following the November 2019 protests in Iran, Amnesty International listed mock executions among other forms of tortures used against Iranian political prisoners.
During recent days, other regime insiders including hardliner eulogist Mahmoud Karimi have said that authorities ordered him not to talk about religious stories that advocated compassion toward prisoners.
Meanwhile, Mehdi Nasiri, a former editor of the Kayhan newspaper has also openly spoken in criticism of Khamenei, blaming him for the country's problem. Sedigheh Vasmaghi, a female jurisconsult has also warned Khamenei that he would be responsible for dividing Iranians over the issue of hijab.
According to Iran International, as more regime insiders begin to speak about the problems in the core of the regime, this can give way to the assumption that the crisis in the core of the regime has become so obvious that could be concealed.
Police said Sunday that on the first day of the implementation of its new hijab enforcement plan it had warned 3,500 businesses about hijab infringements on their premises. They also shut down 137 shops as well as 18 restaurants and wedding hall-gardens that were repeat offenders and referred their cases to the judiciary for further action.
According to police spokesman Brigadier Saeed Montazerolmahdi, police also warned owners of several hundred vehicles whose drivers or passengers were spotted hijabless by text messages.
“The police force will enforce the law against a small number of people who look like they have arrived from a different planet, are unaware of the norms and traditions of the country, and break the law,” he said.
Cycling “hijabless” at Tehran’s Keshavarz Boulevard on April 16.
Police officials warned last week that the campaign against women who do not abide by the hijab rules would begin Saturday with the help of public CCTV cameras.
Many women, however, have shared photos of being in the streets, parks and other public areas without hijab on social media despite the harsh warnings.
Since Khamenei’s declaration of “hijablessness” being not only religiously but also politically forbidden, Iranian officials have focused on the hijab issue despite the many other problems such as high inflation and corruption that the country is facing.
Workers and retirees who resumed their scattered protests after the New Year holidays in early April complain that their dire circumstances are being ignored at the cost of re-establishing the regime’s control over women for hijab. “Bridling inflation was only an empty slogan,” protesting retirees in Shushtar in Khuzestan province chanted Sunday.
Protesting retirees in Shushtar chanting “Bridling inflation was only an empty slogan”
Meanwhile, students staged sit-ins in several universities in Tehran in protest to officials cracking down on women for hijab, using harsh punitive actions against dissident students.
In recent days authorities have denied entrance to women whose tunics were considered as “too short” or for wearing make-up in some universities. Punitive actions such as suspensions, for as long as two years, for hijab and political activities have also been reported in several universities.
“Stop suffocation and suppression in universities” and “Freedom of choice over hijab is the Iranian women’s right”, were some of the placards protesting students held at the psychology and educational sciences faculty of Tehran University.
“Schoolgirls are being poisoned, teachers are in prison, and all they care about is hijab!” protesting students chanted at the social sciences faculty in the same university.
Girls behind the gates of Rasht Azad University waiting for inspection of their appearance before entering.
In a statement Saturday, fifteen prominent Iranian lawyers and rights activists warned the government over its “suppressive policy” of imposing hijab and said a truth finding committee of the United Nations would be required to investigate the harms caused by these policies.
The statement signed by lawyers and human rights activists from inside Iran and abroad including Nasrin Sotoudeh and other rights defenders have urged that UN human rights sanctions should be imposed on those involved in violence against women for hijab.
“Unable to establish justice and equality of women and men as the most basic of legal principles, the Islamic Republic is expanding the suppression of women in contradiction to basic human and civil rights, by forging new terms such as ‘politically haram’ while continuing its clear repressive policies,” the statement said.
“Politically haram” is a term first used by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on April 4. “Discarding hijab is haram (sin) based on Sharia and also politically,” Khamenei emphatically declared at a meeting with state officials while claiming that foreign intelligence services were encouraging Iranian women to disobey mandatory hijab.
