Jordanien: Mit Corona-Gesetzen gegen Lehrergewerkschaft

Die jordanische Regierung nutzt Corona-Notstandsgesetze, um gegen eine unliebsame Lehrer*innen-Gewerkschaft vorzugehen:

Neither a violent criminal, nor a political dissident, Obeidat is one of what lawyers estimate is about 1,000 teachers arrested across Jordan in the past few weeks as part of a crackdown on the kingdom’s largest independent trade union, the Jordan Teachers’ Syndicate.

The 100,000-strong union held the longest public-sector strikes in Jordan’s history last October, culminating in what it called a “historic agreement” to increase teachers’ wages.

One morning last month, police sealed its branches across Jordan, the union was banned from operating for two years, and its 13 elected council members were arrested on secret allegations. Emergency laws passed to fight coronavirus have been used to detain some of the thousands of teachers who have turned out to protest, according to lawyers for the union. (...)

Some government supporters have characterised the campaign against the union as part of a larger regional struggle between Arab monarchies and the Muslim Brotherhood, the transnational Islamist group that was formally banned in Jordan the week before the teachers’ union was shut down.

Diplomats in Amman said the Brotherhood clearly had some presence in the union, with its current president and about a third of its council said to be members. But they said the Islamist group was one of several major forces in the union, and that its influence was likely to be limited given the syndicate’s enormous and varied membership.

Jordanian governments have long been wary of teachers organising. The syndicate was banned for more than half a century until 2011, when the government permitted its reestablishment as part of a raft of concessions to protest movements that sprung up in Jordan as part of the Arab spring.