Jan. 21 – Angry shareholders threw objects and shouted verbal abuse at managers for Iran’s Day Bank during a meeting to elect a new board of directors this week.
The outburst follows a sharp decline in Iran’s stock market which was sold to thousands of investors by the government as a sound financial platform.
Several protests have been held by shareholders around the country with more demonstrations planned to condemn plummeting stock prices and the devaluation of investors’ capital.
More than 100 firefighters held protests in Tehran to highlight poor living conditions on the fifth anniversary of a fire which engulfed the capital’s oldest high rise and led to the deaths of sixteen firemen and four residents.
Firefighters and their family members protested outside Tehran’s municipality and city council to demand higher wages, proper management processes and better pensions.
Demonstrators also asked for suitable housing for firemen in Tehran and chanted “We are tired of promises and lies, not of fire and smoke.”
And former Iran hostage Barry Rosen began a hunger strike to highlight the plight of dual nationals being held by Iran’s regime.
Rosen, who is a US citizen, was taken hostage when Islamic militants stormed the US embassy in 1979 during Iran’s revolution. Rosen was working as the embassy’s press attaché at the time and spent 444 days in captivity until his release on 20 Jan. 1981.
Rosen called on world powers signed up to the Iran nuclear deal to add a clause to the agreement which would make the deal null and void in the event that Iran’s regime continued to detain dual nationals.
