A Special Forces unit using bulldozers broke through the walls of Kian Tyre (formerly Alborz Lastic) and abducted 1000 workers. The workers were bundled onto awaiting coaches and taken away. This Special Forces unit took just 10 minutes to beat up a large number of workers and effectively to kidnap all the workers at this tyre plant. No one, even their families, have any knowledge of their whereabouts.
Just five or six workers escaped, using the sewers to make their getaway, and were able to telephone a report to a radio station. They think that the coaches took the workers to somewhere in Karaj, 20 km west of Tehran.
The workers of Kian Tyre in Chahardangeh, near Tehran, have not been paid for five months and began the protest for payment of their unpaid wages inside the factory on Wednesday 9 April. The Special Forces raid and abductions took place on the evening of Saturday 12 April.
We urge all trade unionists, labour and human rights activists to help us publicise this heinous act of the Iranian regime and to put pressure on it to release the abducted workers immediacy and unconditionally. Please begin your support by sending a protest letter (model letter, http://www.iwsn.org/campaigns/kian-tyre-model-letter.htm).
Iranian Workers' Solidarity Network,
13 April 2008
http://www.iwsn.org/campaigns/kian-tyre-12apr08.htm
Iranian Workers' Solidarity Network
BM IWSN
London WC1N
3XX.
iranwsn@fastmail.fm http://www.iwsn.org/