Iran: Teachers’ nationwide protest; Mrs. Maryam Rajavi's solidarity from

Teachers’ nationwide protest on April 16 in almost 70 cities throughout Iran terrified the ruling mullahs. Teachers’ protest movement against oppression in schools and universities, as well as discrimination and injustice that targets the ruling mullahs has been ongoing since 2014.

In the morning of April 16, tens of thousands of teachers in close to 70 cities in 27 provinces concurrently held protest gatherings against oppression and injustice by Khamenei’s tyranny. This enormous protest followed the arrests of hundreds of teachers by the mullahs’ intelligence ministry and after threats that teachers that participate in protest gatherings will be expelled from the Ministry of Education.

Despite the threats, the courageous teachers of Tehran staged a protest gathering in front of the Ministry of Education. Security forces blocked routes to the site of protest and attempted to prevent teachers from joining the assembly. But a large number of protestors gathered in front of the parliament and chanted slogans against discrimination and oppression of Iranian teachers. They chanted: “Imprisoned teachers must be freed”, “Criticism is forbidden, embezzlement is permitted”, and “Ranking is just a deception”.

Teachers in Kerman wore shrouds (symbolizing that they would give their lives to reach their demands) and took to the streets and shouted slogans against fraudulent promises by Rouhani’s government. On the same day, teachers in Shiraz, capital of Fars Province, chanted slogans against the regime of velayat-e faqih: “Our wages should be paid. True that we number a lot, but we are not surplus.”

In the protest in Mashhad, teachers carried placards that read: “We demand improvement of educational environment befitting the children of Persia.”

In the cities of Boroujerd, Kermanshah, Esfahan, Ahwaz and Kurdistan Province teachers assembled in front of the education departments of their cities to protest discrimination, corruption and suppressive measure by the clerical regime. They demanded the resignation of Rouhani’s Minister of Education.

In other cities, teachers shouted slogans against the velayat-e faqih regime: Poverty line is 3 million, our wage is 1 million; improvement of our livelihood is our absolute right; teachers are cognizant and they abhor prejudice; Teacher! Rise up to remove discrimination.

Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the Iranian opposition, sent a message in support of the protesting teachers and called on the Iranian people, especially the students and the youth, to expand the protests and express their solidarity with the teachers.

Rajavi said: Only the overthrow of the clerical regime by the people and the resistance will end poverty, unemployment and inflation.

She added: While the Iranian people are suffering from poverty, the wealth of the people is spent on unpatriotic projects of export of fundamentalism and terrorism, production of the nuclear bomb, beefing up the suppression machine, the revolutionary guards, and the terrorist Qods Force, or plundered by regime’s leaders and their families.

The leader of the Iranian Resistance, in her message to Iranian teachers said: The official budget of the military, suppressive and export-of-terrorism organs is three fold the budget for education with around one million teachers and 13 million students. Beside the official budget, billions of dollars is placed at the disposal of the revolutionary guards and the mullahs’ intelligence by Khamenei or through the vast economic resources that these organs control with no oversight.

Concurrent with the nationwide protest against the velayat-e faqih dictatorship, Mrs. Rajavi said: As long as the clerical regime is in power in Iran, poverty, unemployment, inflation and soaring prices that hurt the people in general and teachers and workers in particular, shall just get worse. Only the overthrow of this anti-human regime by the people and the Iranian Resistance and the establishment of democracy will bring this great catastrophe to an end.