🗣Your account of living conditions and the economic crisis — Friday, 20 Shahrivar:

🔹I’m in Karaj. On 20 Esfand, our house was destroyed in a bombing. After that, for nearly seven months, they didn’t do anything for us. They only came to take photos and then left.

🔹I’m sending this from Malard. Because I didn’t have a down payment, I had to empty the house and become a displaced person. I who lived for 50 years with dignity—now I’m supposed to be homeless because of a down payment.

🔹From Kermanshah: they increased the wages by 50 percent for the well-fed, corrupt MPs with their hundreds-of-millions pay, and then they give me as a Social Security pensioner-landlord 18 million, even though they still haven’t paid my 3 million arrears since Esfand.

🔹Corporate contractor labor wages—or what they call the “Ministry job”—don’t cover living costs. I who earn 40 million don’t know whether to buy insulin for my wife or pay rent for the house.

🔹This year I’m going to 11th grade experimental, but I don’t have the ability to buy tutoring books and test prep, and reading the school books for the final exams isn’t enough. My mother is the head of the household—how should she, in these economic conditions, pay one million for one book? The school fees also add more pressure.

🔹I’m a citizen of Afghanistan, I’ve lived in Iran for 30 years, and I have legal documents. Yesterday, an officer from the Relief Unit stopped me in front of the city park in Tehran on a motorcycle; I had 100 dollars in my pocket, they took it and went away. I went to the police station, but the Relief Unit representative came and threatened me.

🔹Since fuel prices were raised, inside Baghershahr in Tehran, around the Imababa Water Square and the Fatemi Square, armed government forces are stationed and their motor-riding groups are roaming around, creating fear and terror among people.

🔹The money for water for Bijar’s people (agricultural lands) has come much more than last year. And still they buy rice at the same price; they have no understanding of farmers.

🔹I’m from the suburbs of Hormozgan province. In this southern heat, every day they cut the electricity for between one and two hours. They’ve cut and connected it so many times that our air conditioner has burned out, and we don’t have the money to get a new one in this economic situation.

🔹From Mashhad: I always bought enough coffee—kafiyy (thick cream powder) for my coffee at 300 thousand tomans per kilo. Today, after a few weeks, I went to buy it and that same powder has become 1 million and 300 thousand tomans per kilo.