On Saturday, August 3, 2024, the newspaper “Shahrvand” published an insulting report titled “Three Million Beggars.” The report stated: “One in five Iranian youths aged 15 to 24 neither studies, works, nor learns a profession. In fact, 3 million people are neither employed nor seeking work.” This is the latest statistic announced by the Deputy of Technical and Vocational Research regarding the youth.
A Ministry of Sports official, in relation to this report, said: “The fact that 20% of young people aged 15 to 24 are not engaged in any activity, skill acquisition, or employment, not only can impose a heavy burden on households through the dependency rate but also creates grounds for delinquency and social harm. Nationally, it can also be considered a security threat.”
This official acknowledges that the regime’s main concern for young people today is their religious identity. In other words, the concern of the regime’s officials is not to provide the necessary freedom and welfare for the growth of young people but to contaminate them with religious superstitions.
A majority of young men and women in the Islamic Republic have always been perceived as a threat. This includes the masses who do not tolerate the lifestyle and governance of the Islamic Republic and have not succumbed to the regime’s pressures to become its mercenaries and live according to its reactionary needs, beliefs, and decayed traditions. They are viewed as individuals who are supposedly at risk of the fabricated “cultural invasion of the West.”
The reality is that these youths do not wish to work and live according to the regime’s norms. They are unwilling to work long hours for wages that are three or four times below the poverty line for dictatorial employers. Such employers are the ones who call these protesting youths “beggars” and have their voices published in newspapers that act as their mouthpieces.
According to Iran’s Statistical Center, 25% of Iran’s young population is unemployed. Among the unemployed youth, the majority are educated. According to a 2009 report by the International Monetary Fund, 180,000 of these educated individuals migrate out of Iran annually. They are ready-to-work forces that the corrupt, anti-productive, and commercialized economy of Iran cannot absorb. Therefore, if they are forced to stay in the country, they have no choice but to take on risky and false jobs such as cross-border portering Kolbari in Kurdistan, Sukhtbari in Balochistan, and transporting contraband goods for capitalists in Khuzestan. This latter group is ambiguously referred to as “shooti.” Employers also rely on disenfranchised women and children to do some of their work, who, like the porters, fuel smugglers, and shooti, are not recorded in any statistics.
Young men and women, whether employed or unemployed, in the Islamic Republic are victims of poverty, unemployment, addiction, and other social harms and do not see a future for themselves in this regime. Additionally, these youths see themselves and their families subjected to a group of politicians, officials, and employers who are tyrannical, exploitative, ignorant, and criminal, putting their present and future at risk of destruction. These are the young men and women who have always resisted the Islamic Republic’s efforts to indoctrinate and enslave them. These young people have either chosen to flee and migrate or have immersed themselves in university studies, even though the Islamic regime has turned universities into militarized zones, leaving no promising future for them after graduation. Some of these youths participated in the uprisings of December 2017, November 2019, and the revolutionary movement of Jina, hoping to rid themselves of the ruling oppressors. While they initially adopted premature tactics and suffered heavy blows, they have also logically retreated, focusing on self-organization and gaining an understanding of the regime’s intelligence forces. These experienced and resilient youths are insulted in Friday prayers and newspaper articles because they are the main force capable of bringing revolutionaries and fighters who despise the Islamic Republic back to the streets. They are determined to see the realization of the unifying and affirmative slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom,” with the first step being the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.
