Special report: Iran
Iran cracks down on teachers' pay protests http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2035850,00.html
Robert Tait in Tehran Friday March 16, 2007 Guardian Unlimited
[Iranian teachers take part in a protest over pay in front of the parliament building in Tehran. Photograph: Raheb Homavandi/Reuters]
The authorities in Iran have signalled their determination to break a teachers' pay revolt by arresting up to 1,000 people in a brutal crackdown.
In a carefully coordinated operation, riot police swooped on demonstrators and beat them with batons as they tried to gather outside Iran's parliament and education ministry.
They herded groups of teachers into police vans and buses and transported them to detention centres across the capital, Tehran.
Around 150 of those arrested in Wednesday's protest are still in custody, with the ringleaders believed to be in Tehran's notorious Evin prison. Others were released after signing a commitment agreeing not to participate in "illegal" demonstrations.
The clampdown followed a recent series of rallies outside parliament that had been broadly tolerated by the authorities. The gatherings drew up to 10,000 demonstrators, many displaying banners critical of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government, in a campaign calling for teachers' pay to be brought into line with other public sector workers.
Protesters are angry about salary rates that see the average university-educated secondary school teacher earning £160-£180 a month, well below the poverty line and much less than workers in other government sectors such as the oil industry. Their anger has been fuelled by the government's refusal to enact a public sector pay bill passed by parliament.
Last week, police arrested six teachers' union leaders in an unsuccessful attempt to stop a gathering that coincided with a planned women's rights demonstration.
The latest arrests came after the teachers threatened a one-day stoppage and a nationwide series of protests unless their demands were met.
Wednesday's demonstration was called after union leaders had arrived for a meeting at the parliament the previous day expecting to meet senior education and budget officials, including the education minister, Mahmoud Farshidi, to discuss a proposed settlement. Instead they discovered the officials absent and their places taken by senior revolutionary guard commanders and security officers.
They were warned to keep their complaints within a "legal framework" and that stoppages and public gatherings would be considered as security threats at a time when Iran is facing rising pressure from the west over its nuclear programme. No settlement was presented and the teachers left empty-handed.
Those close to the dispute say teachers propose to defy the warning with a series of staffroom sit-ins during classroom hours. Some also plan to gather outside parliament tomorrow to demand the release of their detained colleagues.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007