The Appeals Board for Administrative Violations of the Ministry of Education has upheld or intensified disciplinary rulings of forced retirement, dismissal, permanent removal from public service, and exile issued against 14 Kurdish teachers, the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) reported.
The Kurdistan Teachers’ Union announced the identities and disciplinary rulings for the 14 teachers in two statements dated 19 and 20 August 2025 as follows:
Nasrin Karimi (forced retirement with a two-grade demotion); Leyla Zarei (removal from the position of school vice president and forced retirement with a one-grade demotion); Salah Haji-Mirzaei (one-year suspension from service); Faysal Nouri (five-year exile to Kermanshah Province); Majid Karimi (dismissal and permanent removal from public service); Ghiyas Nemati (permanent dismissal from the Ministry of Education); Shahram Karimi (six-month suspension); Loghman Allah-Moradi (one-year suspension); Soleyman Abdi (forced retirement with a two-grade demotion); Omid Shah-Mohammadi (permanent removal from public service); Hiwa Ghoreishi (dismissal from the Ministry of Education); Kaveh Mohammadzadeh (dismissal from the Ministry of Education); Parviz Ahsani (dismissal from the Ministry of Education); and one other teacher whose name has not been published for certain considerations, who has also been dismissed.
The rulings of “dismissal and permanent removal from public service” issued against Omid Shah-Mohammadi (a member of the Divandarreh Teachers’ Union) and Majid Karimi (a member of the Sanandaj Teachers’ Union) entail their complete expulsion from the administrative system and the termination of all state-related rights and benefits. These rulings also deny them access to pension and social security benefits.
These measures were issued despite Article 26 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which recognises the right to form and participate in trade associations as lawful. According to the article, “Parties, societies, political and trade associations, and Islamic associations or recognized religious minorities are free, provided that they do not violate the principles of independence, freedom, national unity, Islamic standards, and the foundation of the Islamic Republic. No one may be prohibited from participating in them or forced to participate in one of them.”
The statement by the Sanandaj branch of the Kurdistan Teachers’ Union said: “Particularly in the past two years, and after the periodic elections of the Sanandaj Teachers’ Union were held in May 2024 with official correspondence to the Kurdistan Governorate and on social media, severe pressure and attacks have been carried out against those who organised the elections. Immediately afterwards, disciplinary files were fabricated by the Appeals Board for Administrative Violations of the Ministry of Education for the newly elected board members.”
A lawyer and legal expert, speaking to the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) about these rulings, stated: “These rulings suffer from five fundamental legal flaws: first, certain individuals in the leadership of the provincial education ministry and their subordinates have issued heavy administrative penalties – including dismissal – based on allegations outside any factual or legal framework. This demonstrates the dominance of organisational and structural power over the right to a fair hearing. Second, impartiality has been compromised; individuals such as Nazemi Jalal, Modabber, Sahraei, Ghaem-Panah and Shamsi Kazemi have openly engaged in psychological harassment. Clearly, when the complainant is the administration and the judge is appointed by the complainant, justice cannot be expected.”
The legal expert continued: “Third, the rulings are disproportionate to the alleged offences, which fall under minor accusations. Fourth, the administrative and appellate review processes have been limited to the exchange of written statements instead of holding genuine, public hearings. Under such circumstances, there is no prospect of fair judgement by non-judicial specialists. The process is more political than legal, influenced by post-2021 unrest. Authorities have broadly interpreted teachers’ demands as support for other protesters, which directly contributed to the issuance and upholding of these rulings.”
According to the lawyer: “The fifth flaw is that none of the rulings clearly set out the legal elements of the alleged offences. This stems from the fact that the issuers were not legally trained judges but individuals loyal to the system with little legal knowledge. As a result, the rulings consist only of vague, non-legal phrases rather than legal reasoning.”
Among the teachers subjected to these rulings, Omid Shah-Mohammadi, Hiwa Ghoreishi, Kaveh Mohammadzadeh, and Parviz Ahsani were previously arrested on 15 June 2022 during a raid by security forces on their family homes in Divandarreh, Kurdistan Province, for their involvement in teachers’ sit-ins and union activities.
The activists were detained for 76 days in the Ministry of Intelligence’s detention centre in Sanandaj, Kurdistan Province, before being provisionally released on bail of 15 billion rials (nearly 15,000 USD) each.
Soleiman Abdi was also arrested for trade union activities on 15 June 2022 and temporarily released on bail on 25 June 2022. He was rearrested by security forces in Saqqez on 19 March 2023 and transferred to the Ministry of Intelligence’s detention facility in Sanandaj, before being released again on 10 April 2023 on bail.
Following widespread reactions to these rulings, Fars News Agency, affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), published a report confirming the dismissal of several Kurdish teachers without any reference to their identities. The report repeated security agencies’ narrative, alleging that “these individuals exploited their professional positions to close schools, threaten other teachers and organise unlawful sit-ins to foment unrest and disrupt the education process. Moreover, documented evidence mentions other charges such as establishing contact with and participating in PJAK meetings in the mountainous areas of Divandarreh, including Sultan, Du Bra and Nargesleh.”
Eskandar (Soran) Lotfi, a Kurdish teachers’ union activist, told KHRN: “In my view, such measures are essentially the government’s reaction to the Women, Life, Freedom movement. During this movement, students and teachers played an important role, and the authorities used various tools, including teacher arrests and student poisonings, to suppress them. The authorities are also well aware that Kurdistan has high protest potential and organisational capacity; this is why repression of Kurdish teachers has intensified.”
Available evidence indicates that repression and pressure on Kurdish teachers escalated after th Women, Life, Freedom movement. In addition to the 14 teachers whose disciplinary rulings were issued in August 2025, other cases have also been reported. Leyla Salimi, a teachers’ union activist from Sanandaj who was dismissed by the Primary Administrative Violations Board of Kurdistan Province in 2024, had her dismissal reduced to a two-month suspension upon appeal.
In May 2025, Somayyeh Akhtar-Shomar, a Kurdish woman teacher from Marivan with 17 years of service, was dismissed by Branch 31 of the Administrative Justice Court. Her charges included “supporting and assisting opposition groups”, “publishing offensive content and spreading false information against the Islamic Republic”, “actively participating in illegal teachers’ union channels”, “drafting internal English exam questions in support of insurgents”, and “supporting opposition groups in the Kurdistan Region [of Iraq] on social media”.
Additionally, 15 Kurdish teachers’ union activists – Fatemeh Zand-Karimi, Nasrin Karimi, Mokhtar Asadi, Mohammadreza Moradi, Salahaddin Haji-Mirzaei, Behzad Ghavvami, Seyyed Ghiyas Nemati, Reza Tahmasebi, Rezgar Heidari, Kourosh Ezzati Amini, Shahriyar Naderi, Aram Ebrahimi, Sadegh Kanani, Majid Karimi, and Faysal Nouri – have been summoned to appear before Branch 109 of the Sanandaj Criminal Court Two on 9 June 2025 on charges of “disturbing public order and peace”.
Earlier in 2022, three Kurdish teachers’ union activists – Eskandar (Soran) Lotfi, Shaban Mohammadi, and Masoud Nikoukhah – were arrested and faced heavy prison sentences.
A Kurdish teachers’ union activist who wished to remain anonymous told KHRN: “In addition to those whose rulings have been finalised and publicly announced, at least 70 other Kurdish teachers in Saqqez and Sanandaj have also received disciplinary rulings such as several months of suspension. However, when serving these rulings, teachers were told that if the matter is not publicised, there might be a possibility of reducing the penalties upon appeal. This has led many cases to remain unreported.”
He added: “Based on past experience, this tactic is merely to buy time and reduce public sensitivity. In fact, there have been previous cases where the Administrative Violations Board not only failed to reduce one-year suspensions upon appeal but increased them to permanent dismissals.”
Shiva Amelirad, another Kurdish teachers’ union activist, told KHRN: “Repression of teachers in Kurdistan is far more severe than in other parts of Iran because the Islamic Republic has lacked legitimacy in this region from the outset and has treated even lawful trade union activities as security issues. Moreover, due to the accumulation and interconnectedness of various forms of discrimination and structural oppression, the authorities fear potential future protests and therefore security agencies attempt to politically suffocate Kurdistan by suppressing teachers.”
KHRN has learned that the Administrative Violations Board of the Ministry of Education in Kurdistan Province closely cooperates with security agencies outside the Ministry, including the Ministry of Intelligence and the IRGC Intelligence Organisation, in threatening, intimidating, and repressing trade union teachers.
A teacher familiar with the administrative affairs of the Ministry of Education in the province told KHRN: “The Administrative Violations Board is an instrument in the hands of security agencies. Members of this board threaten teachers with insulting behaviour and even interrogatory methods, and in some cases refer them to security agencies. When teachers participate in trade union activities, these activities are criminalised and the board implements the security agencies’ directives to violate teachers’ rights.”
In this context, the Kurdistan Teachers’ Union in Saqqez and Ziviyeh described members of the Ministry of Education’s disciplinary board as “axe-wielders of the Administrative Violations Board”.
In response to the recent rulings against Kurdish teachers, several teachers’ associations and unions – including the Association of Active and Retired Teachers of Kermanshah, the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Associations, the Educators’ Union of Gilan, the Teachers’ Union of Fars, and the Civil Organisations Council of Marivan – issued separate statements condemning the rulings and calling for their immediate annulment. These organisations also stressed the need for all teachers to be reinstated and for an end to the practice of fabricating cases against educators.
Earlier, in February 2025, 13 human rights organisations issued a joint statement condemning the widespread repression of Kurdish teachers in recent years and supporting their union and civil rights. The statement asserted that the crackdown on teachers in Kurdistan is entirely security-driven. It said Kurdish teachers are subjected to strict security surveillance due to both their ethnic and cultural identity and their civic activism and defence of fundamental and union rights.
The statement added that security agencies, including the Ministry of Intelligence, have informed Kurdish teachers that unless the phrase “solidarity with the people” is removed from their statements and their connections with civil society continue, they will be labelled as “threats to national security”. It also noted that issues such as free education and mother-tongue education – which are recognised in the constitution – are viewed as “political” rather than “trade union” matters by security agencies.
In recent years, international organisations including the Council of Global Unions (CGU), International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Global Union Federations (GUFs), and Education International (EI) have condemned the intensification of human rights violations and restrictions on civil liberties of teachers’ unions and labour activists by Iranian authorities.
The issuance of harsh and widespread rulings against Kurdish teachers – which carry significant political, cultural, economic, and psychological consequences for teachers, their families, students and Kurdistan’s civil society – demonstrates the Islamic Republic’s persistence in violating fundamental human rights principles and even its own constitution to maintain authoritarianism and deepen structural oppression in Iranian society, particularly in Kurdistan.
The authorities’ approach to teachers’ civil and trade union activities is based not on legal and judicial principles but on a security and repressive mindset. This approach imposes severe psychological harm – including heightened fear, pressure and constant threats – on teachers and union activists, further impacting the educational and social environment.