On 1 December Reza Rakhshan, executive board president of an independent union at the giant cane growing and processing Haft Tapeh complex in the southern city of Shush, was sentenced to six months in prison. The charge was “spreading lies” – in an article Rakhshan dedicated to the union’s second anniversary, Rakhshan addressed both the imprisonments of workers’ leaders and improvements in working conditions owing to the activities of the independent union. Rakhshan, previously the union’s communications officer who had been arrested on 4 January, released on bail and then dismissed from his job, was the second union president to be thrown into jail, following the imprisonment of Ali Nejati in 2009.
On 18 November, three Haft Tapeh union members - Behrouz Nikoufard, Alireza Saeed, and Behrouz Molazadeh - were convicted and sentenced to six months in prison by the Ahwaz Court of Appeal on charges of “showing disrespect to the Supreme Leader”. Other Haft Tapeh union members have also served time in prison, been fired from their jobs, expelled from their homes and blacklisted from employment. New charges could mean back-to-back prison sentences leaving trade unionists in jail for years. The Haft Tapeh trade union is one of very few genuine trade unions that appear to have the right to exist within the national legal framework.