Arrested on May 8, the two teachers are accused of having sought “to provoke chaos” while he was held a few days earlier in Iran teacher demonstrations. Paris asked for their “immediate liberation”.
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A new case of “prisoners-mobile” will poison relations between Paris and Tehran, already at the bottom. The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced, Thursday, May 12, the “baseless” arrest of two French people in Iran, demanding their “immediate liberation” and promising to “remain fully mobilized for this purpose”.
The French Ambassador to Tehran tried to obtain consular access to these two people and the Iranian Embassy in Paris was summoned to the Quai d’Orsay, said the ministry in a press release.
Wednesday, the Iranian Intelligence Ministry announced the arrest of two “European teachers”, without specifying their nationality, implicated for having sought to “cause chaos and social disorder in order to destabilize” the country . They are notably accused of having met members of the Coordination Council for Iranian Teacher Associations, a union network which fights against the degradation of the standard of living and the repression.
The two French nationals, a couple of teachers who are members of the Union Ouvrière (FO) Confederation, were arrested at Tehran airport on May 8, while they were about to return to France, According to the Iran International media, published in the United Kingdom. Within the National Federation of Education, Culture and Vocational Professional-Fo (FNEC FP-FO), we assure that they were visiting the country privately for the holidays.
But their profile, one of them being a member of the management of the Federation responsible for international relations of the union, had to arouse the interest of Iran’s security services. The two French people would have entered the country on April 29, two days before a national mobilization, the 1 May, workers in the education sector; It has given rise to rallies and demonstrations in nearly sixty cities through the country’s twenty -one provinces in a tense climate.
Social awakening
Since the United States’s unilateral withdrawal of the Iranian nuclear file agreement in 2018, on the initiative of the administration of former President Donald Trump, American sanctions have been reimpected to the Islamic Republic Iran, causing the country in an inflationary spiral. The local currency has lost 80 % of its value against the dollar and the inflation rate flirts with the 40 % in annual rate.
The social front woke up. Civil servants, petrochemical workers or retired multiply the manifestations against the degradation of their standard of living and corruption – which they attribute to the elites of the regime – lived as always more unbearable. At the forefront of the dispute: the education sector.
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