After a day of international action to call for the release of the jailed Iranian trade unionists, Mansour Osanloo and Mahmoud Salehi, the latest email update gives heartening news of support in the Middle East:

(1) In Tunis, all transport workers unions demonstrated in front of the Iranian embassy and delivered their protest letter. A press conference was held during the day. Mukhtar Hilli, President of the Transport Federation in Tunisia called on all members of the Federation to participate in the campaign and urged them to stand in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in Iran.

(2) In Jordan, activists from road and air transport unions, including the women committee, protested in front of the Iranian Embassy in Amman and displayed the campaign stickers in Arabic and Persian.

(3) All transport unions in Morocco (UMT) met and sent representatives to the Iranian Embassy to protest and demand the release of Mansour Osanloo.

(4) In Yemen, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Lebanon, the ITF unions sent letters to the Iranian President and the Embassies in the respective countries.

Civil society is alive in the Arab world, collective and class interests can still pose an alternative to the politics of religious identity. Here is the real resistance to Islamism. Heartening news indeed.

More on the day of action here.