On the morning of an international day of action calling for the freedom of jailed trade union leaders in Iran, five executive board members of the Tehran bus workers’ union Sherkat-e Vahed were rounded up and thrown into the prison where their leader, Mansour Osanloo, has been incarcerated without charge since 10 July.

In Sanandaj Central Prison, Mahmoud Salehi of the Saqez Bakery Workers’ Association marked the action day, on 9 August, by smuggling out a statement of thanks to the international labour movement. He used his statement also to condemn the arrest and imprisonment of 11 fellow trade unionists in May following their participation in International Workers’ Day events.

Iran’s rulers fear the influence of international solidarity on the growing labour movement in their country. Yet they have failed to acknowledge a key lesson of history: the only sustainable way to diffuse the momentum behind any movement for fundamental human rights is to begin to respect those rights.

Meeting fellow trade unionists on a trip to London three weeks before he was violently apprehended by security forces, Osanloo spelled out the depth of his loyalty to his “beloved Iran” and categorically stated that he was not anti-government. His driving concern is to raise the salaries of his fellow workers from where they currently languish, at US$200 below the poverty line.

The current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad doubtless has many of these workers to thank for his election in 2005, which was carried on the image he presented as “dustman of the people” and saviour of the poor.

He claimed he would work for equality in an oil-rich country beset by mass poverty. But the emptiness of this promise is as clear as the contempt the regime continues to hold for human and labour rights.

"The only sustainable way to diffuse the momentum behind any movement for fundamental human rights is to begin to respect those rights."

If the Iranian government could find a way to grant workers the right to express their concerns and negotiate for improvements in their conditions, it would not compromise but consolidate its grip on power.

The alternative is to continue to stoke unrest among the people of Iran and to invite the growing condemnation of workers and their governments within the Arab world and beyond.