Latest Operation to Expel Afghan Workers from Iran!
The Iranian government has announced a new aggressive plan to expel non-status Afghan workers from the country. Officials from the Interior Ministry, security forces, public prosecutor’s office, the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs will all be involved in the execution of the plan. According to the media releases, the first phase of the plan, which is about identifying “illegal” workers, began on October 28, 2006.
According to various reports, there are over two million Afghan migrants in Iran. The government claims that about 900,000 have been issued residence documents; the rest are considered illegal. Out of those with valid residence documents (temporary permits) only about one thousand have valid work permits. The Iranian government has announced that they intend to expel some 500,000 “illegal” Afghan migrants from Iran by the end of 1385 (March 20, 2007). Employers will be penalized for hiring non-status Afghan migrants as well as those with status but with no work permit, which is the vast majority. Employers may face fines and the rejection of bank loans and financial services.
The Iranian government, which faces double digit unemployment rate, widespread underemployment and rising inflation, as the result of its neo-liberal policies of privatization, contracting out, downsizing, cut backs, plant closures, lay offs and restructuring as well as years of corruption and anti-labour practices and so on, is claiming that they could create 300,000 to 400,000 employment opportunities in Iran by the end of the fiscal year if the expulsion of Afghan workers progress. It is a big lie. This is not the first time the Iranian government resort to the racist policies of scapegoating migrant workers in the country. In recent years, Iranian authorities have been exerting excessive pressures on Afghan refugees to return home, suspending education and medical care for them and repealing their residence permits. These pressures have been making it easier for security forces to treat Afghan workers extremely abusively and threatening them with deportation. Government-sponsored radio and press campaigns in Iran have been pressuring Afghan migrants to return home and threatening them with arrest and legal action if they failed to do so. Government-sponsored organizations such as “Workers’ House” and “Islamic Labour councils” have also been influential in launching such racist campaigns against Afghan workers in Iran. Last year, even the UNHCR officials, who had collaborated closely with the government, reported that the Iranian government had gone “too far” in their forced repatriation of Afghan refugees.
The majority of Afghan workers and their families in Iran have no access to public services or decent paying jobs. Their children face severe restrictions in accessing public schools. Many Afghan workers have been living in Iran for over 25 years yet they have no status. They generally perform the hardest, lowest paid and most insecure jobs in Iran, including sewage and wastewater disposal, brickyard, odd labouring and construction jobs as well as farm work. Despite facing harsh conditions in Iran, many Afghan migrants refuse to go to Afghanistan because of serious safety and security issues and continued prevalence of violence and war in Afghanistan. The US-led coalition’s war in Afghanistan has had serious consequences such as the rise of armed conflicts, warlords’ crimes and rampant corruption. The economy and reconstruction in Afghanistan has not truly developed and many ordinary people, including returnees from Pakistan and Iran, can’t find jobs or even basic shelter and food. Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of Afghan migrants lived all their life in Iran and have significantly contributed to the Iranian economy and the labour market and many were even born in Iran. None of these fellow workers should be considered as illegal. They must have the right to live, work, study and build decent livelihood in Iran. They all in reality are as much citizens of Iran as all other Iranian nationals.
Workers in Iran, regardless of their nationality, face similar conditions in their struggles for a better life against employers and neo-liberal and repressive government policies. The denial of the right to organize and the lack of mass workers’ organizations in the country have left many workers in the country, including Afghan migrants, defenceless. Afghan workers, however, are amongst the most disadvantaged sections of the working class in Iran. All workers in Iran and other parts of the world should stand in solidarity with Afghan refugee and migrant workers.
The International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran (IASWI) calls on all labour and progressive organizations and activists to take stand in defence of Afghan workers’ rights and dignity in Iran.
All deportations and forced repatriation must be stopped immediately!
Legal permanent resident status for all migrant workers now!
Long Live International Solidarity of Workers!
For more information contact IASWI:
[email protected] or [email protected]
November 14, 2006