Fmr Iranian national football team player on hunger strike out of poverty

  Manouchehr Shafaghatian, a former Iranian national football team player, has sewn his lips and gone on hunger strike to protest the level of poverty and unemployment he is facing.

Mr. Shafaghatian, who played for the Persepolis side and the Iranian national team in the 1980s, said in an open letter: "I won't go to hospital. I want to die. I have gone on hunger strike in my mother's house. No one saw me when I joined the queue of poor people to beg at a donations centre and get provisions to take for my family. I have sewn my lips in the name of all those pioneers who have only poverty on their dinner tables."

"No one has taken the pills for my nerves to understand why Shafaghatian has become like this. No one has sat at my dinner table to see that I have only a bowl of blood before me," the former top-class Iranian player added.

He added that he is even prepared as a former national side player to take charge of washing the laundry at one of the football (soccer) clubs to earn a living and get by.