We demand the immediate release of Mahmoud Salehi, a labor activist in Iran.

The Islamic regime of Iran, which represents and defends the capitalist system there, has again arrested Salehi, a political and labor activist, despite his medical condition. They did so because he is organizing workers to defend their rights against a capitalist ruling class that is functioning through a rentier state in order to steal the Iranian people’s resources while forcing workers to work under inhuman conditions. Salehi has heart and kidney disease and has to use a dialysis machine in the hospital. Arresting and keeping him in jail has no meaning other than a death sentence for him.

Regardless of their different factions – principalists or reformists – the rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran agree with this kind of treatment of labor activists, as they are all enemies of the working class, especially of working people who live under the poverty line. They even use the confrontation with – and possibility of an imperialist intervention by – Trump and U.S. imperialism as an excuse to put more pressure on workers and to crack down on political and labor activists.

We demand the immediate release of Salehi and ask for the support of all socialists, humanists, progressives, antiwar activists, and of Marxist and Marxist humanist tendencies, in order to defend political prisoners in Iran.

Some political activists in Los Angeles

November 12, 2017