A deputy in regime’s Ministry of Education admitted holding over 1,000 teachers in prison.
Mostafa Nasseri declared this shocking statistics quoting the Prisons Organization, but refrained from revealing the number of teachers held as political prisoners in Iranian regime’s prisons and dungeons.
Surely the number of imprisoned teachers exceeds this number and regime’s officials are providing smaller figures for the horrendous number of hardworking and noble educators in detention due to the extensive protests by country’s educators.
The Deputy Minister of Education absurdly attempted to allege that these one thousand teachers are in prison because they have not paid up their loans or are broke. However, this alone, is enough reason for the infamy of regime’s leaders who are plunderers as it shows that the educators who are to bring up the new generation and who are responsible for advancing culture and knowledge that would in turn diminish crimes in the society are themselves poor and living under the poverty line. They have failed in providing the minimum livelihood for their families and have ended up in prisons of this corrupt and criminal regime.
But what have compelled regime’s officials to acknowledge they are keeping one thousand teachers in prison are the escalating protests of the educators. The gathering of teachers, before all else, aims at securing the release of their imprisoned colleagues. Any protest by teachers against the suppression and crackdown, much like their protests against their deplorable living conditions caused by living on under the poverty line wages, will be met by charging them with “propaganda against the system” and “activity against the national security”. This will be followed by prison sentences and torture in the prisons of this antihuman regime. This is the reality that the Ministry of Education, in collaboration with the Prisons Organization that is tasked to detain, torture and suffocate any opposition voice, are trying to cover up.