Surviving Tehran: A Labor Camp Story

This entry has been published on November 22, 2022 and may be out of date.

45% of Iran’s industries are gathered here. Tehran. With more than 10 million population, most of them live on the outskirts of this metropolis. This amount of economic discrimination in a country with population of 85 million, it is clear what results it will bring. The first one has been internal migration in the country, which has increased the population of the outskirts of the city. An extremely cheap workforce.

The governor of Tehran said last year that 23% of the total population of the outskirts of Iran’s cities are in Tehran. He said that 4.5 million people of Tehran live in dilapidated buildings on the outskirts of the city. At the same time, half a million people of this city live in settlements that are illegal according to the municipality. (Report in Farsi)

In addition to criticisms of how cities are expanding, the centralization of industries, and the unbalanced development of the country, it is also being criticized for systemic corruption and looting. The complex and intertwined structures of the regime, from government to IRGC to various non-governmental organizations and private companies, are looting under no existing any mechanism for monitoring or transparency from the citizens.

No matter what policies the Islamic Republic pursues in the region, how it is involved with the United States over geopolitical tensions, these are the realities of Iranian society. Discrimination in broad economic and social dimensions that since coming to power, the authorities of the Islamic Republic had a magic formula against all criticisms: western propaganda!

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