Osanloo, Iranu! Iran, Uvavu!

A rather cramped demo on the pavement opposite the Iranian Embassy today. The Embassy is set back from the road and has a big wall built in the way to keep us out, but the police needn’t really have bothered to squash us into so tight a corral, as it looked like they weren’t home anyway, with the doors firmly closed and shutters rolled down.

Very different from the demo planned in Tehran, where 5 more members of the Bus Workers Union were arrested today, and police surrounded the demo venue of Mansour Osanloo’s house, threatening to arrest anyone who turned up.

Mahmood Salehi has managed to get a message out from his cell in Sanadaj prison, which is displayed on the web here. Very selflessly he uses the message to ask for campaigning support for another group of workers who have been sentenced to prison or whipping over their roles in the May Day celebrations, and says he’s currently on a one day hunger strike to protest their treatment.

Anyway here are a few pics from the event:

Iran demo

Most of the demonstrators were with the ITF (the yellow tabards), or ex-pat Iranians, but also a presence from Unison and GMB.

Iran demo

Iran demo

Iran demo

Nice to see Peter Tatchell there, who gave a good speech to the crowd on the need for solidarity across the human rights agenda – If you come for one of us, we’ll all come for you (much more concise than most union demo speeches!) .

Iran demo

David Cockroft gives an update to the cameras on this morning’s crackdown in Iran.

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