Mass arrest of bus drivers

Hundreds of bus drivers in Iran have been arrested without charge or access to counsel, the international rights NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said. In a pre-emptive move by the government aimed at thwarting plans for a strike by the drivers, several union organisers were also detained. The exact number of detainees is not known, although some union officials are reported to have said the figure is between 500 and 700 drivers. HRW said on Wednesday that the drivers had organised the strike to protest at the detention of their union leader, Mansour Ossanlu, who was arrested on 22 December at his home following months of protests by the drivers. Thirteen others members of the union were arrested along with Ossanlu, charged with engaging in ‘illegal activities’. The group, who represents thousands of bus drivers, had been protesting against poor wages and the right to form an independent union. The rights watchdog said Ossanlu was being held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison without access to his lawyers and that he is suffering from a serious eye complaint and is in need of medical attention. "Iran's new government boasts of representing the interests of working men and women. Their violent crackdown on the bus workers' union make these words ring hollow," Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW's executive director of the Middle East and North Africa division, told Reuters. The union’s spokesman, Gholamreza Mirzaii, told HRW that the union’s board of directors was arrested on 26 January. Mirzaii said that the authorities released some detainees on Sunday and Monday, although they had not been allowed to return to work. Many now face the sack, according to the union. The Union of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, which was founded in 1969, was not resurrected after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Although the bus workers resumed trade union activities in 2004, the government has refused to recognise the union.