December 31, 2021
Water protests and other political demonstrations have waned this past month to be replaced with marches by teachers all over the country on a scale large enough to draw the attention of the Majlis, which has finally approved teacher pay raises after a decade of postponement.
The raises were described as “up to” 15 percent and enough to bring schoolteachers’ wages in line with the pay given the lowest rank of university lecturers.
But pay raises for the 750,000 teachers in the country will add about a billion dollars to the budget that the regime does not have. It is widely expected that the Majlis action will be ignored. President Raisi cannot veto legislation, but laws don’t take effect until the president publishes them in the government gazette, which presidents sometimes fail to do with laws they dislike.
The law as approved does not take effect until after Now Ruz, which some cynics have suggested was done in hopes that the teacher’s enthusiasm for protesting would die out by then.
Huge numbers of teachers protested December 11, 12 and 13 in more than 100 cities around the country. Police in some cities attacked the teachers and broke up the protests. The Majlis acted on December 14.
The bill has been pending since 2007.
Leaders of the teachers’ union generally did not think the bill went far enough, with some leaders of the group saying the protests, which have been going on for years, would continue. A week later, the national Coordinating Council of the teachers unions called for national protests for December 23 and said protesters turned out in 120 cities. The accompanying photo shows the Tehran protests that day in front of the Majlis.
The Majlis passed the bill on a 117-86-11 vote.
As for the water protests in Esfahan, they have ended. The government was initially accommodating when a crowd of hundreds of thousands gathered November 19 in the dried-up riverbed of the Zayandeh River. But security forces broke up the tent encampment of waterless farmers the following Wednesday night and deployed masses of forces in the city to prevent a repeat the following Friday.
Motorcycle-mounted security officers drove into groups that had gathered. Tear gas, birdshot and rubber bullets were used that Friday to break up groups trying to reach the riverbed. The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said about 40 people suffered eye injuries from hits by pellets.
Videos showed many chanting “Death to Khamenehi.”
There were a scattering of water protests in other cities in late November, but there were no sympathetic protests mounted in Tehran.