Issues
Stand up for your rights Protecting our democratic systems means speaking out, engaging and standing up for your rights and for those of colleagues and students. The most effective and sustainable means to improve the fate of students, the profession and communities remains collective action through democratic, independent trade unions. Why did the Arab Spring succeed in Tunisia, but fail in Egypt? There was an explosion of information available in both places, people went to the streets, and social networking exploded, but little significant change has occurred in Egypt. Why didn’t that happen in Tunisia? There were historical factors, among them that the dictatorship in Tunisia had educated its people, had relatively progressive laws on women’s rights, and was more secular than its neighbours. The key difference was that in Tunisia workers had a legitimate, representative trade union organisation, the Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail (UGTT). During all the years of repression, which included greater or lesser attacks on the UGTT leadership, internal trade union democracy was maintained. Members may not have known a political democracy, but they lived democracy in their trade unions. The UGTT was an actor in the economy, respected by employers, and had a large enough base and enough power that even autocrats had to negotiate with them.
democratic legitimacy for the struggle. When the fight moved to Tunis, the UGTT national headquarters was prepared to take the lead, but it was not necessary. It was all over. Later, when liberty was endangered by Islamic fundamentalists, the UGTT helped save democracy because it was a large, democratic organisation representing workers from all sectors and regions. It was, with its partners, recognised with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015. There are so many stories of courageous teachers standing up for their rights and for democracy. Some have paid a very high price for expressing their views, establishing independent organisations and mobilising their colleagues. From Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria to Djibouti, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain at the time of the Arab Spring. From Cambodia to Indonesia, from the stan countries to Turkey to the Balkans, from Chile to Brazil, to Venezuela, from South Africa and Zimbabwe to Sudan, Djibouti and Ethiopia, it is a very long list of countries and places where teachers, despite repression, stood up in defence of a democratic future for their nations. The trade union challenge to repression is different from that of others in civil society. For example, the government of Iran understands that free trade unions are a threat to authoritarian rule.
When people went to the streets in Tunisia during the Arab Spring, region by region, they went to the UGTT regional structures.
When teachers, bus drivers, journalists and food workers formed independent unions, their leaders risked arrest, harassment, violence and years in prison.
Their struggle was adopted by the regions and they provided structures and
For more than a decade, leaders of the clandestine teachers’ organisations have
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been arrested, tortured, sent to prison and some have even been sentenced to death. The repression by Iran’s religious and military elite against trade union officers shows their understanding of the importance of legitimate trade unions, the appeal of democracy and the power of organised society. Five names not to be forgotten, from the records of Education International: Farzad Kamangar, one of the founders of the Iranian teachers’ organisation, was charged with endangering national security and sentenced to death after a trial lasting less than five minutes. He was executed on 9 May 2010. Abdolreza Ghanbari, teacher activist, arrested on 4 January 2010 for allegedly belonging to an armed opposition group, first sentenced to death in 2012 after an unfair trial, then, in June 2013 sentenced to 15 years in prison, but released in March 2016 after a global solidarity campaign. Mahmoud Beheshti Langroudi, teacher activist, arrested on 24 April 2010, tortured, denied urgent medical care, and sentenced to six-years’ imprisonment on 22 February 2016.
