Iran: Worker activist Mahmood Salehi released

April 21, 2008. A World to Win News Service. Mahmood Salehi was freed April 6 after being kept in prison for a year by the Islamic Republic. Released in the city of Sanandaj in Iranian Kurdistan, he was received by hundreds of jubilant friends and colleagues and was driven to his hometown of Saghez. In the days following, his house was repeatedly filled with visitors from different corners of Kurdistan. Close observers say more than a thousand people paid a visit to his home over a couple of days.

However, the struggle for his complete freedom is continuing, because he faces prison terms in three more cases. He was released on a bail of 40 million Toman (about 45,000 U.S. dollars).

Two days after his release he said, “I will continue to stand for the rights of the workers.” (Amir Kabir news online)

Salehi became well known in 2004 when he and other workers dared to openly celebrate May First, International Workers’ Day, in Saghez. He has been in and out of prison ever since. While incarcerated, the regime denied him medical treatment for life-threatening kidney failure. He was due to be released on March 25, but the authorities kept him in prison after he had served his sentence because, they said, he had sent solidarity messages for Student Day and for March 8, International Women’s Day. At a time when the U.S. is threatening to attack Iran and is posing as the “liberator” of the Iranian people, Salehi took a position against both U.S. imperialist war and the IRI and has refused to call for “national reconciliation” with the Islamic regime.

A World to Win News Service is put out by A World to Win magazine (aworldtowin.org), a political and theoretical review inspired by the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, the embryonic center of the world’s Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations.

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"What we see in contention here with Jihad on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade on the other hand, are historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system. These two reactionary poles reinforce each other, even while opposing each other. If you side with either of these ‘outmodeds,’ you end up strengthening both."

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