Over the last few years, the press has become the main
battlefield for political struggle in Iran, and journalists along with
press freedom have become the main victims. During the course of 2001,
Iran became the country with the largest number of imprisoned journalists
in the world, with a high of 27 incarcerated media workers. The year saw a
continuation of the crackdown against Iran’s independent press that began
in 2000 after supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused reformist
publications of being "bases of the enemy" and ordered Parliament not to
debate a motion to reform Iran’s draconian press laws.
By the end of 2001, more than 40 newspapers and journals had been banned.
Many reformist journalists, editors and publishers were harassed,
threatened, tortured and received prison sentences, and 18 were still in
jail by year’s end, according to RSF.
Hassan Youssefi Echkevari, theologian and contributor to now banned
newspapers such as Adineh, Neshat and Iran-é farda, has been in jail since
5 August 2000. He was prosecuted, like seven other journalists and
intellectuals, for his participation in the 2000 Berlin conference,
organised by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, which has close ties to
Germany’s Green party.
The conference was called to discuss the progress of reform in Iran.
Echkevari was accused of being a "threat to national security" and of
being a "mohareb" (fighter against God), making him liable to the death
penalty. An Iranian appeals court overturned the "mohareb" charges and
thus the death sentence against Echkevari on 19 May 2001. There were a few
other dispersed signs of improvement in the media climate towards the end
of the year, but it is not an exaggeration to say that the crackdown on
the press is far from over.
On 13 January an Iranian court sentenced editor Akbar Ganji and six other
reform activists to up to 10 years in prison for their part in the 2000
Berlin conference on political change in Iran. The sentences were a
confirmation that the crackdown by the conservative-dominated judiciary
and political establishment has all but wiped out liberal reforms
introduced by moderate President Mohammad Khatami. Ganji, editor of the
Fath (Victory) newspaper, was jailed for 10 years – four years for his
part in the conference, four years for possessing a confidential
government bulletin, 18 months for insulting the late Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini and six months for spreading propaganda against the Islamic
system.
The sentences drew outrage and criticism from around the world, even from
top levels of the moderate pro-reform establishment in Iran itself, "Those
people who attended the Berlin conference did not commit a crime and their
treatment by the judiciary was wholly factional and politically
motivated," Iran News quoted Mohammad Reza Khatami, the president's
brother and the leader of the largest party in Iran’s parliament, as
saying. That fact alone goes a long way to show the powerlessness of the
electorate, which has twice given Khatami’s party an absolute majority in
Parliament.
As a campaigning investigative journalist, Ganji had alleged high-level
involvement in the so-called serial murders of dissidents. Reports he
wrote on official wrongdoing became national best sellers. Ganji said at
his trial he was told by the Intelligence Ministry not to look further
than mid-level security agents when investigating the 1998 killings of
dissident intellectuals. Nor was he to dig into events before President
Khatami’s 1997 election. The agents, threatened him with jail if he did.
"The decision to imprison me was taken beforehand and this court is just a
pretext. You know this as well as I do," Ganji told the judge. "The
political will exists to put me behind bars and you are just sitting there
to carry this out." He was reportedly subjected to torture while awaiting
sentencing. Six other defendants were given jail terms ranging between
four and 10 years. On 15 May Ganji was cleared of three convictions by a
Tehran appeals court, reducing his prison sentence from 10 years to six
months. The court also overturned the further five years of internal exile
that Ganji had been ordered to serve (in a remote southern town) in
addition to his prison sentence. The convictions against him that were
quashed included ‘harming national security’ and ‘keeping classified
documents’.
However, the court upheld a verdict of ‘insulting authorities’ and
deliberated further charges. It confusingly set bail at US $75,000 for his
release from prison for the charge of insult, but refused to accept bail
for the other charges. (The average monthly salary in Iran is US $100.)
The court later changed its mind on the verdict, extending the sentence to
a 15 months. On 17 June Ganji’s wife pleaded with President Khatami in an
open letter to help protect him against severe treatment by hardline
courts. She said, " …Ganji has been kept in solitary confinement for 108
days of his 15 months in prison… He has not been allowed any visits in
nine months. In the past three weeks he has been quarantined alone in a
basement of Evin Prison." The letter was published and publicised in
foreign media since "Iranian newspapers are censoring my comments because
they are afraid of being closed. This leaves me no choice but to turn to
the foreign media."
On 10 July a new detention order was issued by the Press Court. The new
charges against Ganji included "spreading propaganda against the state",
"insulting religious sanctities" and defamation. Six days later the
Revolutionary Court sentenced Ganji to six years in prison. Ezatollah
Sahabi, the 75-year-old editor of Iran-é Farda, was imprisoned on 17
December 2000. Charged with taking part in the Berlin conference he was
sentenced along with Ganji and others on 13 January to four years'
imprisonment.
On 27 January, a military court sentenced three secret police agents to
death and 12 others to terms of up to life in prison for their part in the
1998 murders of secular dissidents that had shocked the country. Yet
families of four murdered dissidents said they opposed death sentences for
the three agents convicted of killing their relatives. They also opposed
any jail sentences. Under Iran’s Islamic Sharia law, relatives of murder
victims have the right to overturn death sentences. The families demanded
an end to extra-judicial killings and said they were more concerned that
the truth behind the killings be brought to light than exacting revenge on
the killers.
Members of Iran’s reform movement have alleged that prosecutors have
ignored links to high-ranking clerics and intelligence officials and
pursued only a few low-level defendants as part of a cover-up. They say
the killings were among more than 80 murders and "disappearances"
stretching over 10 years as part of a campaign by state-sponsored death
squads to silence opposition. The victims’ families boycotted the
closed-door trial in protest against the gag order imposed by the
judiciary and what they said was the removal of key evidence from court
files.
Reformist journalist Ibrahim Nabavi was sentenced to eight months'
imprisonment for "deceptive publications, insults against officials of the
regime and unfounded accusations" on 10 January, according to RSF. A
contributor to banned newspapers Jameh and Tous, Nabavi was arrested on 12
August 2000, and released on bail on 18 November. The day of his arrest,
he received a prize as best political humorist.
On 17 January, Iran’s hardline judiciary closed down a magazine that
helped launch the contemporary reform movement. The monthly Kian, which
was intellectual and philosophical in outlook and had a limited
circulation, was banned for "publishing lies in order to incite public
opinion" and "insulting religious sanctities". Abdolkarim Soroush, a
leading reformist philosopher vilified by hardliners for his liberal
views, was a regular contributor to the magazine. Kian was instrumental in
developing the idea of a civil society within a religious state – a
concept Khatami later championed in his 1997 election campaign. Kian’s
articles were serious and academic in tone and avoided factional political
conflict. The magazine presented diverse interpretations of Islamic law
and promoted open debate on religious and philosophical questions.
Hoda Saber, editor of the banned Iran-é Farda monthly magazine was jailed
after being interrogated on undisclosed charges on 29 January. The
monthly, which advocated democracy and greater tolerance in Iran, was
closed down in 2000. Iran’s hardline Revolutionary Court seized books,
documents and family pictures from Saber’s home on 7 February. His wife
said he was still being denied access to his lawyer and that the nature of
the charges against him remained unclear. The court had earlier seized
documents from the offices of Iran-é Farda.
Another journalist, Naqi Afshari, was freed on bail on the following day,
two days after being arrested for allegedly lampooning the judiciary.
Afshari, father of imprisoned student leader Ali Afshari, was running
Hadis, a weekly newspaper in the northwestern town of Qazvin. The paper
was banned on the day of his arrest. Ali Afshari was sentenced earlier to
four and a half years in prison for taking part in the Berlin conference.
He received another six months on a related charge.
Mohammad Hassan Alipour, publisher of the outspoken weekly Aban, which was
shut down in 2000, was charged on 30 January with 39 counts of spreading
lies, inciting corruption, insulting religious sanctities and spreading
propaganda against the state. On 11 March Alipour was given a six-month
suspended sentence and was banned from working for the press for five
years. He was convicted of "spreading lies to disturb public opinion". In
July an appeal court nullified the jail sentence and lifted the five-year
ban on his press activities. The appeal court also cut down to one-third a
US $1,200 fine against the publisher.
On 31 January reformist Ahmad Zeydabadi, an outspoken Iranian journalist
held in prison on a "temporary" detention order for more than five months,
went on a hunger strike. Zeydabadi’s wife said he had gone on the hunger
strike after spending more than five months in prison without trial to
protest prison conditions. After a week of fasting, Zeydabadi was
reportedly taken to the prison hospital with internal bleeding.
On the same day, Iranian newspapers reported that the publisher of the
banned reformist daily Payam-e Azadi (Message of Freedom) was summoned to
the hardline press courts. Details of charges against the newspaper
remained unclear.
On 4 February, Reuters reported it had withdrawn its bureau chief in
Tehran, Jonathan Lyons, after Iranian authorities made allegations against
Lyons and threatened Reuters with unspecified action following the
publication of an interview by Lyons of Akbar Ganji, which ran on January
22 under the headline "Iranian Reformer Warns of Political Explosion".
Reuters said it "did not feel it had the guarantees it needed of Lyons’
continued well-being in Tehran". Lyons’ wife, Geneive Abdo, a journalist
for The Guardian and the International Herald Tribune left Iran on 3
February. Abdo explained they left because they were threatened by the
authorities with possible prosecution for violating a law which makes it
illegal to interview a political prisoner.
On 23 January, the International Herald Tribune published the interview
with Ganji. In it, he talked about a "possible backlash of the [Iranian]
conservative establishment". The general director of the foreign press,
Mohammad-Reza Khochvaght, explained that "these two journalists acted in
contradiction with rules and ethics and distorted Ganji’s statements". On
4 February, the Ministry of Culture announced that Lyons was barred from
returning to Tehran.
On 12 February, hardline Iranian bodies renewed the death sentence against
Salman Rushdie ahead of the 12th anniversary of the "fatwa" against the
British author issued by former supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini. "We ask world Moslems to carry out this divine edict and cleanse
the world of such mercenary Satans," the Islamic Propagation Organisation
said in a statement quoted by the IRNA news agency. The elite
Revolutionary Guards also issued a statement in support of the fatwa
against the Indian-born writer for alleged blasphemy against Islam in his
novel "The Satanic Verses". The calls came despite a 1998 pledge by the
Iranian government not to seek to carry out the fatwa, a move that led to
warmer ties with the West. Ignoring the pledge, a hardline Iranian
foundation in 2000 offered to add interest to its US $2.8 million bounty
on Rushdie’s head.
On the same day, according to RSF, Mohammad-Bagher Vali-Beik, general
manager of Jamée-é Rouz, a major publishing company that for three years
published most of the reformist newspapers that are currently banned, was
arrested and imprisoned in Tehran.
Iran's hardline press court jailed Abbas Dalvand, editor and publisher of
provincial newspaper the Lorestan weekly on 13 February. Dalvand was
accused of slandering several hardline institutions, including the
Revolutionary Guards and the security branch of the police forces. Dalvand
told IRNA before going to jail that he had been given little time to
prepare a defence and he protested against the order to imprison him. In a
rare move, the judge allowed the weekly to continue publishing provided it
did not report on the case against its editor and publisher. Dalvand was
released on bail on 18 February.
On 9 May Dalvand was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment and banned from
practising his profession for a further three years. The publisher of
another weekly in the western city of Zanjan also stood trial on 12
February, but he was acquitted by a jury, IRNA said.
Fariba Davoudi was arrested on 15 February by agents of the Revolutionary
Court who searched her residence for seven hours and seized a large number
of documents. She worked at the now-banned reformist newspapers Khordad
and Fath before moving on to Hambastegi. A reformist Member of Parliament,
Fatemeh Haqiqatju, later sharply criticised the revolutionary court for
the "violent" arrest of Davoudi. "Armed agents coming for her arrest
resorted to force and violence. They yanked her chador (veil) off her,
squeezed her in the door frame and then searched her and her daughter’s
bedrooms," she said. Haqiqatju also said that jailed dissidents were being
tortured by Iranian interrogators. Davoudi was finally released from jail
on 12 March.
Davoud Allah-Verdi, Daryoush Imani and Mohammad Bazgir, journalists with
the daily Ruzdara, were given prison sentences on 24 February ranging from
three months and seven days to five and a half months for a slanderous
article. The three journalists, who were given 20 days to appeal, were not
detained, according to RSF.
In a further political move that later backfired, a court banned
conservative weekly Harim on 8 March, accusing it of mocking President
Khatami and his reform programme. The newspaper’s publisher, Hassan
Akhtari, was ordered to stand trial for the alleged crime. It was one of
very few hardline publications banned in Iran. On 11 March, Khatami
himself sharply criticised the closure of the hardline newspaper accused
of insulting him.
"I am not happy at all to see a newspaper closed on the pretext that it
insulted the president," Khatami said in a speech to parliament. "Where
does the law say to close a newspaper for insulting the president? If we
interpret any satire and criticism as insult, it will ruin the climate for
press activity," he said in remarks broadcast by state radio. Khatami, who
does not control the conservative-run judiciary, pleaded for an open trial
for Harim's publisher "in the presence of a jury as soon as possible. The
desire to read newspapers cannot be suppressed," Khatami continued. "If we
don't create the right climate, then people will turn to sources we have
no control over," he added, referring to foreign media. Iran's press guild
also criticised the closure of the hardline weekly.
On 11 March, Reuters reported that the wife of an imprisoned journalist
had sent a letter to judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi
inquiring after her husband’s whereabouts. Parvin Bakhtiari-Nejad said her
husband, Reza Alijani, editor-in-chief of the suspended reformist monthly
Iran-é Farda (Iran Tomorrow), had been hauled away from their home without
a warrant in February and that she had not been allowed to contact him.
"My children and I have not even been allowed to speak to him by phone.
What am I to tell my three-year-old child who keeps asking about his
father?" she said, quoted by IRNA. Alijani was finally released on bail on
16 December, after 295 days without trial. The charges against him include
acting "against state security".
Also on 11 March, security agents raided a reformist meeting and arrested
Ahmad Zeid-Abadi of Iran-é Farda, Taghi Rahmani, journalist with banned
reformist weekly Omid-é Zangan, Faremeh Govaraï, also of Omid-é Zangan,
Ali-Reza Redjaï and Mohammad Bastehnaghar of suspended daily Asr-é
Azadegan, and Morteza Khazemian and Reza Raïs-Toussi of suspended daily
Fath, along with several others, according to RSF. Although Zeid-Abadi and
Govaraï were released the following day, Rahmani remained in detention. On
the following day, the head of the Tehran Revolutionary Court stated that
"the detainees were conspiring to overthrow the Islamic government".
Arrested on 7 August 2000, Zeid-Abadi had been released on bail on 28
February. He was being charged with, among other things, "defaming the
Islamic Republic’s Guide", Khamenei, "publicly insulting" the republic’s
founder, Imam Khomeini, and "anti-Islamic propaganda".
According to RSF, on 18 March the daily Dorran-é Emrouz, two weekly
newspapers, Mobine and Jamée-Madani, and the monthly Peyam-é-Emrouz were
ordered by the judiciary to stop publishing. Proceedings were launched
against the four newspapers’ publishers or managers: Hamid-Reza
Zahedi-Kohnegourabi of Dorran-é Emrouz, Mohammad Gharibani of Mobine,
Mahmoud Raoufi of Jamée-Madani and Mohammad Zahedi-Asl of Peyam-é Emrouz.
On 7 April, 42 persons were arrested and placed in custody, including Reza
Tehrani, editor-in-chief of the banned Kian, Fazlollah Salavati,
editor-in-chief of banned weekly Navid-é-Esfahan, Saide Madani of the
suspended bimonthly Iran-é-Farda, and Hossein Rafiei, a university
professor and publisher of the monthly Shimi va Toseeh (Chemistry and
Development). The suspects were all charged with "collaborating with
counter-revolutionary groups". They all had connections to the Movement
for the Liberation of Iran (MLI), a progressive Islamic party that was
banned in March.
In a statement carried by television, Ali Mobasheri, head of Tehran’s
revolutionary court, accused the suspects of seeking to overthrow the
Islamic state. Again, Iran’s president voiced his opposition, "I do not
see such measures as benefiting the (Islamic) system and people... I
cannot help feeling regret", state television quoted President Khatami as
saying. "Boosting the climate of intolerance in society will dishearten
intellectuals... Our nation desires nothing more than freedom, progress
and guaranteed rights."
Security forces raided the offices of Rafiei’s journal on 16 April.
Documents and computers were seized at the Tehran offices of Shimi va
Toseeh. On 15 April, according to RSF, Hamid Kaviani, a journalist from
the suspended daily Salam, was abducted for several hours, beaten and
released. He was later hospitalised with serious injuries. On 21 May,
Kaviani again disappeared in the street in Tehran. In June 2000, Kaviani
had appeared before the Special Court for Clergy because of his book, "The
Pursuit of the Criminals", an investigation into the murders of opponents
in late 1998. Like Ganiji, Kaviani implicated members of the Intelligence
Ministry.
Hechmatollah Tabarzadi, editor-in-chief of the daily Hoviyat-é Khich and
student leader, was arrested and imprisoned in Tehran on 17 April. This
latest incarceration brought the number of imprisoned journalists in Iran
to 21, making the country the largest prison in the world for journalists,
according to RSF.
On 21 April, Amid Naini, editor-in-chief of banned monthly Peyam-é Emrouz
(Today's Message), was arrested and jailed for publishing an article
denouncing the recital of verses from the Koran as a "superstitious
practice", and another article describing the angel Gabriel - who,
according to Islam, dictated the Koran to the prophet Mohamed - as an
"imaginary creature". Naini was released in July on US $25,250 bail after
spending nearly three months in "temporary" confinement. On 7 May, a ban
against Arya, a reformist newspaper, was lifted and an appeal by its
publisher, Mohammad Reza Zohdi, who was convicted in 2000 by a hardline
press court, was upheld.
Several new independent dailies also hit Iranian news stands ahead of
presidential elections on 8 June, but there were no indications that bans
on 35 other publications might be lifted. The appeals court had struck
down a four-month prison sentence issued in July 2000 against Zohdi. But
the court upheld a two-year ban on Zohdi preventing him from working in
the media and imposed fines on him. Two days later, on 9 May, an Iranian
court banned a newspaper. The ban came only five days after it had been
launched by a leading reformist.
On the same day Hamid Jafari-Nasrabadi, student head of magazine Kavir,
and Mahmoud Mojdayi , a journalist with the same newspaper, were arrested
in Tehran after being interrogated for several hours by Tehran’s press
court judge. They were accused of publishing a "blasphemous" article in
which they had used an "indecent tone" against several state institutions.
In Iran, someone found guilty of deliberate blasphemy may face the death
sentence. Tehran’s press court judge at the same time banned the
newspaper. On 28 May, two more Kavir journalists, Reza Nadimi and Mehdi
Amini, were detained pending trial for the same article. All four student
journalists were still in jail at the end of the year.
Between 8 and 13 May, police closed down more than 400 Internet cafes in
Tehran, demanding that the owners obtain licences to stay in business.
Owners said telecommunications authorities had banned the use of Internet
sites offering cheap telephone connections to relatives abroad, citing a
state monopoly on long distance calls. Some 1,500 Internet cafes are
dotted across Tehran, with more in other major cities. The cafes are
popular with the overwhelmingly youthful population in the Islamic
republic, not least since the state and private media are so tightly
controlled by conservatives. However, each Iranian Internet user must sign
a written agreement when signing up for an Internet connection, which
states that s/he will not surf non-Islamic sites.
Jailed editor Mashallah Shamsolvaezin was transferred to solitary
confinement on May 17, according to CPJ. He was also summoned around this
time by Teheran’s Press Court for questioning about his alleged ties with
opposition figures, several of whom had been arrested in the previous
weeks. Shamsolvaezin, editor of several now-banned Iranian reformist
dailies, was jailed in April 2000 after being sentenced to 30 months
imprisonment for the crime of "insulting Islamic principles". The editor
was prosecuted for publishing an article that criticised capital
punishment in Iran.
On 21 May, the Entekhab newspaper reported that a 35-year-old Iranian
woman had been buried up to her armpits and stoned to death by court
officials for producing and acting in obscene films. She denied the
charges, but evidence and testimony from witnesses led the judge to issue
the maximum sentence allowed under Islamic sharia law, the paper said. She
was stoned by court officers at Tehran’s Evin Prison in the presence of
the judge who tried her case. Stoning is a relatively rare punishment in
Iran, where drug smugglers and murderers are usually hanged.
Gholamheydar Ebrahim-bay Salami, Member of Parliament and an influential
member of the reformist Hambastegi (Solidarity) party, as well as
publisher of the Hambastegi newspaper, was indicted by the hardline press
court on 22 May. Details of the charges against Salami were not made
public. He was released on bail pending further investigation after being
interrogated. Those who lodged complaints against Salami included the
state broadcast monopoly, the police, the Revolutionary Guards and Kayhan
newspaper, all led by hardliners allied to Khamenei. Tehran’s justice
department chief also filed a 120-page complaint against Hambastegi, which
was one of the first major pro-reform newspapers to open after a wave of
closures in 2000.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) said on 10 June that its
correspondent John Simpson and two colleagues had been arrested by secret
police in Tehran on the previous night and then released after
three-and-a-half hours. Simpson was covering a celebration by supporters
of President Khatami, re-elected with a 77 per cent majority on 8 June.
The BBC said secret policemen who oppose Khatami mingled with the crowds,
taking names, filming them with video cameras and using strong-arm tactics
against foreign journalists. It said one secret policeman dug his finger
into Simpson’s eye, narrowly missing the pupil with his fingernail. The
team was held for three-and-a-half hours at a police station before being
released. The Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance said it
intervened to get the three released.
On 23 June, Iran’s reformist-dominated Parliament passed the outline of a
bill to make radio and television more accountable to the public, in
effect turning state broadcaster, IRIB, into a public broadcaster. The
bill calls for a broad-based board to set policy for IRIB. Members of the
board would come from different parts of society, including Parliament,
government, the press, universities and religious schools. However, the
bill required a second reading in Parliament and approval by the Guardian
Council, a conservative body which vets legislation before becoming law.
On July 9, the former editor-in-chief of English-language daily Iran News,
Morteza Firoozi, was released on parole after four years in solitary
confinement after being found guilty of espionage. He was freed before
completing a five-year sentence. Firoozi had been held since mid-1997 and
was sentenced to death in January 1998 on charges including espionage for
foreign countries, but the Supreme Court revoked the death sentence.
On 27 October, Iranian police renewed a crackdown on satellite dishes
after authorities blamed riots on television broadcasts from the USA by
exiled opposition groups. Hundreds of dishes were removed from homes in
the capital Tehran as part of a campaign against "social vice". Soccer
fans had taken to the streets after three international games, damaging
property and chanting slogans against Iran’s Islamic leaders. Hundreds of
people, mainly youths, were arrested. Iran outlawed satellite dishes in
the mid-1990s as part of efforts to curb the inroads of "decadent" Western
culture. But the ban had largely been ignored since the 1997 election of
President Khatami.
On 30 October, Jafar Karami, director of Amin-é Zanjan, was sentenced to
91 days imprisonment and his weekly newspaper was suspended due to the
publication of articles that were "insulting [to] the highest dignitaries
and the Islamic government" and incitement "to dissension between the
different strata of the population". The director’s sentence was finally
commuted to a two-year suspended sentence because of severe injuries the
journalist suffered during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war. Abbas Rashad, the
editor-in-chief of Amin-é Zanjan, was sentenced to 30 lashes, a fine
equivalent to several hundred US dollars, and a three-year ban on
practising his profession, on 9 December. The journalist was charged with
"insulting the justice department", according to RSF.
Issa Khandan, head of the social service of two dailies, Khordad and Fath,
was arrested on 10 November by the Clergy Court. His wife stated that she
does not know the reason for his arrest.
Siamak Pourzand, aged 70 and a diabetic with a heart condition, went
missing on 24 November. There were unconfirmed reports that he had been
arrested by Iranian intelligence services. In previous weeks he had worked
with US-based Iranian opposition radio stations. According to Amnesty
International, the journalist’s disappearance was connected with his
position as manager of a Tehran cultural centre for artists, intellectuals
and writers. The journalist was well-known for his articles against the
Islamic regime. Pourzand is the husband of human rights lawyer Mehrangiz
Kar, who was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for her participation
at the Berlin conference. She is currently free on bail and receiving
cancer treatment in the USA.
The newspaper Mellat was suspended by authorities on 29 November,
reportedly to prevent "offensive measures aimed at creating tension and
insecurity in the climate of the country’s press." Distribution of the
newspaper was previously suspended on 23 May 2000, a day after its first
issue was published.
On 27 November, financial daily Akhbar-é Eghtessadi was banned from
publishing. The Press Court, presided by Judge Saïd Mortazi, noted that
according to the law the newspaper, published in 1997 and 1998 under the
names Akhbar and Akhbar-é Eghtessadi, had previously been banned by the
court and could not be published again. The daily was suspended in 2000.
Neda-ye-hormozgan, a reformist weekly, was closed on 13 December. Its
editor, Gholam-Hossein Ataiee, was given a five-year suspended jail
sentence and fined US$8,600. The charges against him are unknown.
Reformist weekly Asr-e-Ma was shut down by the authorities on 15 December,
and its publisher, Mohammad Salamati, was sentenced to twenty-six months’
imprisonment. He is still free pending appeal. He was accused of spreading
a rumour in December 2000 to the effect that an attempt had been made to
overthrow President Khatami. He had told a meeting of students that
conservatives had "put a resolution before the Supreme Court" charging
that Khatami was "incompetent" to govern. The "rumour" was denied by a
government source. A legal official, Abassalki Alizadeh, then lodged a
formal complaint against Salamati for having published an article on 12
December 2000 in which the journalist criticised "the way in which radio,
television and the legal authorities" had reacted to his statements.
On 22 December, authorities from the University of Ferdossi in
northeastern Iran ordered the permanent closure of student magazine Nazar,
which was close to the reform movement and edited by Javad Seifi Abdolabad,
who now faces a disciplinary committee. The reasons for the closure are
still unknown.
Ahmad Gabel, a journalist for Hayat-é No, was arrested on 31 December on
orders of the Special Court for the Clergy. Gabel also wrote editorials in
many reformist publications and regularly gave interviews to foreign radio
stations, according to RSF. He is known for his strong criticism of the
conservative guard, most notably of Ali Khamenei. Only hours before
Gabel’s arrest, Radio Freedom had interviewed him.
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2000 World Press Freedom Review
An apocalypse occurred at the end of the millennium not in the Christian
world but in the Islamic Republic in the shape of the crack down of the
press. Indeed, this year was one of the worst years concerning freedom of
expression in Iran. The closure of newspapers and the imprisonment of
journalists started as a wave in the last three months of 1999 and came to
its peak in April. While the reformist President Khatami kept silent the
conservatives damaged the hopes that arose from the victory of the
religious reformists in the presidential elections (1996), in the
municipality council elections (1999) and in the parliamentary elections
(November 1999).
Since the start of 1999, eight journalists have been arrested and three of
them, Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, editor-in-chief of the banned dailies Jameh,
Tous and Neshat; Latif Saffari, managing director of Neshat and Abdollah
Nouri, managing director of Khordad and former interior minister, are
still in prison.
On 6 January, Said Hajarian, managing director of the pro-reform daily
Sobh-e Emrooz and close advisor of President Khatami, appeared in a
Teheran Press Court. Hajarian is one of the leaders of the pro-Khatami
"Islamic Participation Front". He was deputy minister and one of the
founders of the ministry of information (security police) during the
1980s. He was accused of having "disclosed confidential information". Sobh-e
Emrooz published some articles about "serial murders" within Iran. On the
basis of corroborated evidence, during the 20 years of Islamic government
more than 80 dissidents and intellectuals disappeared or were murdered at
home or in the street. By the end of 1998, two distinguished political
dissidents and three writers had been killed.
These cases were discussed in the reformist newspapers. Under the pressure
of reformists and the media, the ministry of information was forced to
admit that "rogue" elements from within the information ministry were
responsible for the killings. This statement failed to convince anybody
and some journalists asked for a further investigation. The case became
one of the most acute conflicts between religious reformists and
conservatives in Iran. After the court hearing on 14 March three
hard-liners opened fire at Hajarian. He was not killed but is now forced
to live in a wheel chair.
On 16 January, Yadollah Eslami, Ghafour Garchasebi and Hajarian from the
dailies Fath, Asr-e Azadegan and Sobh Emrooz were summoned to the
conservative dominated Press Court. They were persecuted because of having
reprinted an interview with Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Montazeri published in
The Guardian on 13 January. Montazeri is one of the greatest theologians
and religious authorities in Iran. Because of his criticism he has been
under house arrest since 1998
In February, Nik Ahang Kowsar, a cartoonist was held in custody awaiting a
hearing before the press court because of one of his cartoons. The
conservatives made a demonstration in the Shi´te Moslem holy city of Qom
and claimed that the cartoon attacked one of the religious conservatives
authorities. The Demonstration was supported by the Revolutionary guards
and hard-liners who asked for the resignation of Ataollah Mohajerani, the
minister of culture.
On 20 April the Iranian religious leader, Seyyid Ali Khamenei, in a speech
ordered a mass attack on the press. He said, "There are 10 to 15 papers
writing as if they are directed from one centre undermining Islamic and
revolutionary principles, insulting constitutional bodies and creating
tension and discord in society. ... Unfortunately, the same enemy who
wants to overthrow the [regime] has found a base in the country ... Some
of the press have become the base of the enemy." He announced that he
would not tolerate this situation any longer. The judiciary system reacted
quickly. Within 10 days of the speech about 25 newspapers had been closed,
including, Asr-e-Azadegan, Fat'h, Aftab-e-Emrooz, Arya, Gozaresh-e-Ruz,
Bamdad-e-No, Payam-e-Azadi, Azad, Payam-e-Hajar, Aban, Arzesh, Iran-e-Farda,
Sobh-e-Emrooz, Akhbar Eqtesad, Jebheh, Mosharekat, Awa Gozaresh-e Rouz,
Ham´mihan, Khordad, Bayan.
In a statement the judicial authorities accused the reformist and
independent press of, "continuing to publish articles against the bases of
the luminous ordinances of Islam and the religious sanctities of the noble
people of Iran and the pillars of the sacred regime of the Islamic
Republic". In this statement, the judiciary authorities announced that the
newspapers had been closed in order to, "prevent them from committing new
offences, from affecting society’s opinions and arousing concern among the
people".
Throughout this year, Iran saw owners, managing directors,
editor-in-chiefs and journalists of the banned newspapers being called to
appear before the Special Clergy Court, the Revolutionary Court and the
Press Court. All of these courts are dominated by the conservatives. In
spite of the fact that the ministry of Culture supported the reforms it
also occasionally closed some newspapers without trial.
On 22 April Akbar Ganji, a popular investigator journalist, who followed
the serial murders and has written for Sobh-e Emrooz and Asr-e Azadegan as
well as some other newspapers, was arrested by the revolutionary court and
imprisoned. The case was reminiscent of the cases of Mashallah
Shamsolvaezin, arrested in 1999, Mohsen Kadivar, a high clergy, arrested
in 1999, and Abdollah Nuri.
One day later, on 23 April, Latif Safari, director of the banned daily
Neshat (closed in September 1999), was sentenced to a 30-month jail
sentence on charges of, "insulting the sanctity and tenets of Islam". The
basis of this charge was an article that questioned capital punishment in
Iran.
In late April, the judiciary started to prepare the trials against
reformist and independent journalists. Even the daily Mosharekat,
published by the brother of the president and the director of Islamic
Participation Front, was banned and Mohammad Reza Khatami was summoned to
court. Prior to this development, a famous journalist Emadoldin Baghi, an
investigator journalist and close friend of the president was sentenced to
more than five years in prison. His book "Tragedy of Democracy" was
confiscated from the book-shops and burnt. This attack on the press
continued throughout the whole year while the reformist president and some
of the top reformists kept silent. Some radical reformists – some of them
are close to Khatami and the Deputies of Parliament – criticised the
compromise made between the President, top reformists and conservatives.
Some others complained that the president did not have enough power to
stop the crack-down and guarantee freedom of the press.
Some commentators believe that the April crackdown was the reaction of the
conservatives against the victory of the reformists in the parliamentary
elections. In the absence of political parties, trade unions and NGOs in
Iran, the press has played a very important role. Most of the popular
press that appeared after the presidential elections was controlled by
religious reformists. Some of them gave space to non-religious reformists,
liberal journalists and writers. A few independent monthly magazines were
given permission to be published. Religious reformists put most of their
efforts into reaching the people through the press. However, the army, the
Revolutionary guards and the security police, economically powerful
foundations, remained in the hands of the conservatives. The president
insisted on the rule of the law but the Iranian Constitution (suffering
from a conflict between democracy and despotism) gave enormous power to
the religious leader and religious institutions such as the Islamic
Guardian Council. In the parliamentary elections, the press played a
decisive role. The articles of Ganji and Baqi that highlighted the role of
the former president in the serial murders were one of the reasons why the
Ex-President and his daughter were not elected as one of the 30 Deputies
of Teheran.
Other commentators believe that a group of the top reformists including
the president are worried because the freedom of press may destroy the
whole Islamic system. Some of the reformist leaders criticised the press
and charged them with being extremists. They stated that Iranian reforms
should not share the same fate as the Soviet Union and the Eastern Block.
They sought a moderate press. This tendency, the president belongs to this
group, withdrew their support for the reformist press and gave the
judiciary authorities a free hand to close the newspapers and arrest the
journalists. The minister of culture Ataollah Mohajerani, one of the
distinguished reformist figures and a supporter of the religious reformist
press, criticised some of the press because they published writers and
journalists who did not belong to one of the wings of the government. His
position revealed the paradoxical nature of religious reform in Iran.
Religious reformists are trying to achieve some reform within the
framework of Islam, but at the same time they want to exclude
non-religious reformists, liberal tendencies and all those asking for a
separation of powers between religion and government.
The majority of Iranians have placed immense pressure on journalists to
publish news and different point of views. This is because only the press
in Iran has the opportunity to act as the voice of the people.
As a reaction to this crackdown, the majority of Parliament decided to
amend the Press Law to benefit freedom of the Press. The April crackdown
was based on the Press law. The former Parliament, dominated by the
conservatives, passed a new press law to strengthen the penalties against
the press. The prohibitions in this press law are drafted so widely that
it could include anything. On the basis of this law not only the ministry
of culture and press court but also the revolutionary court, the ministry
of information, the public court, clergy court and some other authorities
have control over the press and can arrest journalists and close their
newspapers. This law stipulates that the press "must be faithful to the
Islamic Revolution". The new law also gave the state security court the
power to close any newspaper immediately for a two-month-period without
announcing any reason. On the basis of this law, "the members and
sympathisers of counter-revolutionary groups or illegal political
formations, as well as persons who are sentenced by revolutionary courts
for "acting against the internal security of the state and disparaging the
holy order of the Islamic Republic.", or those who spread propaganda
hostile to the Islamic regime, are not authorised to be employed by a
publication under any circumstances".
Furthermore, the new law requires, "the Information and Justice
Ministries' and the police's pre-authorisation". Previously, only the
ministry of culture's approval was required. In addition, responsibility
for articles no longer rests solely with the managing editor of a
newspaper, but can also be attributed to the author of an article. This
law forbids, "the publication of articles which are critical of the
constitution." In this law judges of the different courts of the judiciary
system are authorised to interpret and decide which article or news is
against Islamic law.
As this press law was the foundation for the April crackdown, the new
parliament decided to amend it. It was clear that the amendments would
benefit freedom of press because of a majority of votes in parliaments.
However, it was unforeseen that the High Council of Guardians would make
use of its veto against the amendments; but, on the day that Parliament
wanted to discuss the amendments, a letter from the religious leader was
read by the parliament speaker, Mehdi Kaaroubi, in which the religious
leader forbade any amendments and discussion about the press law. He
wrote, "If the enemies infiltrate our press, this will be a big danger to
the country's security and the people's religious beliefs. I do not deem
it right to keep silent ... The present press law has succeeded to a point
to prevent this big plague. The (proposed amended) bill is not legitimate
and in the interests of the system and the revolution." Answering those
deputies who criticised the speech, the speaker said, "Our constitution
has the elements of the absolute rule of the supreme clerical leader and
you all know this and approve of this. We are all duty-bound to abide by
it".
After this incident, one of the newspapers published an article about a
meeting between the religious leader, the president, the speaker of
Parliament, the chair of the judiciary system and the chair of the High
Consulting Council (Ex-president Rafsanjani). In this article, the
reporter said all decisions about the crack down in April had already been
decided before the hearing in parliament. As a result the crackdown began
to gain momentum.
The April crackdown and the ban of discussion in the parliament about the
press law were founded on the conservative interpretation of the Islamic
Constitutional Law. This law also claims to include freedom of speech.
This contradiction in law is an expression of the contradiction between
democracy and despotism and modernity and tradition in Iran that exists
not only in the law but in all aspects of Iranian contemporary live. In
the political structure, the minister of culture Ayatollah Mohajerani
supported the freedom of press and because of that was criticised by the
conservatives and the religious leader. At the end of this year his
position became very weak and in January 2001 he was forced to resign.
On 7-9 April, the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation organised a conference in
Berlin titled, "Iran After the Sixth Parliamentary Elections". A number of
religious reformists, politicians, journalists and writers were invited to
take part. The conference received enormous publicity within Iran and
Germany. The conservatives abused this conference and some of the
participants and arrested them after their return to Iran One of the
participants, Hojjat al-Islam Youssefi Eshkevari, a very popular and
influential high ranking clergymen, journalist and a famous religious
reformist, was charged by the special clerical court with apostasy which
carries the death penalty in Iran. After his return to Iran, he was
arrested and sentenced in an in camera hearing before the court. By the
middle of January 2001 his verdict had still not been announced.
The other participants were accused by the revolutionary court of damaging
the security of the country and insulting Islamic principles. In January
2001, Akbar Ganji was sentenced to 10 years and 5 years banishment;
Ezatollah Sahabi, the editor-in- chief of the banned monthly Iran-e Farda
to four years and six months, Ali Afshari, a student leader and supporter
of Khatami, to five years, Mrs. Shahla Lahiji, director of Roshangaran, a
publishing house for women’s book, Mrs. Mehrangiz Kar, a prominent
journalist, writer and lawyer and human rights advocate, to five years
(she is suffering from cancer), Said Sadr, a translator, to ten years,
Khalil Rostamkhani, a translator, to eight years, and Mrs. Shahla Sherkat,
editor-in chief of the magazine, Zanan (Islamic feminist magazine) to five
years.
On 2 April Imaddaddin Baqi, a journalist of the daily Fath, was charged
with publishing information about an assassination attempt on Said
Hajarian, the editor of reformist daily Sobh-e Emrouz. The accusation is
based on a statement of the information minister Ali Younessi, who
prohibited the press from publishing, "any unofficial information, rumours
as well as foreign press analysis about Hajarian´s attackers". This
prohibition was against the press law in Iran. Three days later, on 5
April, Mohammad Rezan Khatami, editor of the banned daily Mosharekat, was
interrogated by the Press Court on the same matter. Emadeddin Baqi was
summoned to the press court on 11 April. Charges against him included
insulting religious values and libel. The editor was arrested on these
charges on 29 May, while the daily Mellat was closed six days beforehand
on 23 May.
In May, the journalist from the banned monthly Iran-e Farda, Taghi Rahmani,
was taken into custody in the central town of Shahr-e Kord. He was accused
by the town’s Revolutionary court of insulting Ayatollah Khamenei in a
speech he delivered at the University.
On June 17, a Tehran revolutionary court summoned publisher Alireza
Khoshandam on charges of making insulting comments while running as a
candidate for the parliamentary elections in February. Khoshandam,
director of pro-reformist newspaper Gofteman-e Khallaq had denied the
charges. He was sent to jail after he was unable to pay the equivalent of
about US$ 6,000 in bail money.
Imadeddin Baqi detained since late May was sentenced to five and a half
years prison in Press Court on 17 June. Baqi had been charged with
publishing articles that questioned the validity of Islamic law,
"Threatening national security, and … for spreading unsubstantiated news
stories about the role of agents of the Information Ministry in the serial
murders of intellectuals and dissidents in 1998". His in camera trial
began on 1 May.
On 18 July the conservative-dominated Press Court sentenced Reza Zohdi,
publisher of the banned popular Arya daily, to prison charged with
spreading lies, inciting public opinion, engaging in propaganda against
the state and striving to weaken the system. He was sentenced to four
months imprisonment, banned from all press activities and ordered to pay a
fine of an undisclosed amount. All these charges were founded on one
interview published in his daily concerning the fact that a file on more
than five thousand political prisoners executed in 1991 without trial
should be investigated. On 25 July the hard-line press court closed a
reformist weekly Gounagoun, set up by a group of reformist journalists,
whose newspapers were closed.
In August two pro-reformist women publishers, Faraneh Bahzadi, the
publisher of the biweekly Danestaniha and Fatemeh Farahmandpour, publisher
of the Gounagoun weekly were charged with insulting Islam and carrying out
propaganda against the state. The judge, Mortazavi, the conservative chair
of the Press Court who is well known for jailing defendants before hearing
the case, ordered the closure of their newspapers and fined both
individuals.
On 5 August, Ahmad Hakimi Pour, director of the liberal weekly Omid-e
Zanjan was sentenced to two months imprisonment by the press court in
Teheran. He was found guilty of insulting the commander of the Guardians
of Revolution. One day later, on 6 August, the weekly Tavana was ordered
closed for publishing articles that allegedly defamed officials of Iran’s
Islamic system. The basis for the decision was a cartoon showing the
reformist President Mohammad Khatami without his traditional robes and
turban.
On 7 August, a leading liberal journalist Ahmad Zeidabadi from the
moderate Hamshahri daily, run by the Teheran municipality was arrested at
his home. He is still in prison.
On the same day the pro-reformist weekly Cheshmeh Ardabil in northwestern
Iran was suspended for four months on charges of disturbing public opinion
and insulting Islamic sanctities. The paper’s director, Nasser Jafari, was
fined one Million rials.
Also in early August, the Bahar daily, a pro-reformist newspaper, directed
by Said Pour Azizi, was closed by the Press court. The order was sent by
fax to halt publication immediately. The final issue carried a front-page
interview with Mohammad Reza Khatami, leader of the reformist faction and
brother of the president. He said, "Unfortunately, our own newspaper is
banned and we cannot respond to these lies and slanders.
In the middle of August the pro Khatami journalist Massoud Behnud; Ibrahim
Nabawi, a very popular and influential satirist and winner of the annual
award for the best political satirist; and Mohammad Qouchani, a young
religious reformist and essayist were arrested by the Press Court. After
some months in prison they were released in December after being forced to
apologise. The press court also fined Mohammad Reza Yazdanpanah, former
publisher of the banned newspaper Azad and barred him from publishing.
On 17 August, the hard-line Iranian press court closed the pro-reformist
weekly Ava and barred its publisher Mostafa Izadi from press activities.
The weekly published some news about Iran’s foremost dissident theologians
Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who has been under house arrest since
1997. Four days later, on 21 August, the Teheran Press Court announced
that it was pursuing new cases against Shamsolwaezin, jailed in April and
Bagher Vali Beig and Hamid Reza Jalaipour, journalists from the dailies
Neshat and Jaameh.
In this month, the Supreme Court approved a six-month reduction in
Shamsolvaezin three-year jail term. He was sentenced in November 1999 to
three years in prison and a US $4,000 fine for "hurting Islam" following
the publication of articles questioning capital punishment.
Continuing pressure on the press was accompanied in August with a new wave
of attacks against the student movement in Iran who supported the
reformists and freedom of press.
The trial, begun in July, of lawyers Mohsen Rahami and Sherine Ebadi, who
stood accused of producing and distributing a faked video tape defaming
a number of conservative figures and officials. Sherine Ebadi, a writer
and lawyer was banned from her work as a lawyer for five years.
On 12 September, Iran's judiciary indicted 18 people, including senior
intelligence officials, on charges of murdering dissidents. The accused
are standing trial in a closed-door military court for the murder of four
dissident intellectuals in 1998. A key suspect, former deputy intelligence
minister Saeed Emami, died while in custody last year, reportedly taking
his own life. On the basis of different sources reported by Reuters, "a
wave of politically-motivated murders masterminded by ‘rogue’ agents in
the security services has left more than 80 people dead over the past
decade". Some reformist newspapers have protested the decision to limit
the investigation to only four murder cases. Other commentators also link
the murders to senior figures in the establishment. Akbar Ganji and
Emadeddin Baqi, two reformist journalists who were investigating the
murder cases and the purported links between the killers and establishment
officials, have been imprisoned. Pro-reform newspapers that called for
full investigations have also been closed down by hard-liners who dominate
the judiciary.
Not only the different courts but also pressure groups, supported by
revolutionary guards and police were very active against freedom of speech
in this year. On 19 September, Reuters reported, "Iranian vigilantes"
raided a bookshop in the city of Isfahan, seizing 700 books as well as
magazines and compact disks they deemed to be anti-Islamic. A member of
the shadowy right-wing group "Ansar-e Velayat" said in an interview that,
"the books seized in the attack were written by secular Iranian writers
and Western philosophers including Jean-Paul Sartre." All these books had
a license from the censorship office of the ministry of culture but one of
the attackers said, "The books were corrupting, anti-religious and deviant
... Our brothers confiscated them in a popular and spontaneous act after
being tipped off by pious people."
On 20 September Khalij-e Fars, a political weekly close to reformists,
published in Bushehr/South-Iran, was closed by order of the ministry of
culture without any court. The director Mohammad Ahmadi was charged with
disturbing public order.
In October, judge Monutschechre Mortazavi banned a children's newspaper
Gonbad-e Kaboud for showing a picture of a naked man. The managing
director of Gonbad-e Kaboud is due to appear before a special Press Court
to answer charges relating to the picture. Images of nudity and
semi-nudity are banned in Iran.
The number of newspaper banned since April increased to more than 35 and
the number of journalists in jail to about 25.
On 7 October a leading independent writer and religious scholar,
Hojatoleslam Hassan Youssefi Eshkevari, who has been held in solitary
confinement and denied legal counsel since 5 August, was tried behind
closed doors in a special court for the clergy on a variety of charges,
including "being corrupt on earth" and apostasy, which carry the death
penalty. The verdict and sentence will not be announced till 15 January
2001. On 18 October Iran denounced as one-sided a United Nations report
accusing the Islamic Republic of a catalogue of human rights abuses from
meddling in elections to torture and restricting press freedom. The report
was written by Canadian jurist Maurice Copithorne, a UN Human Rights
Commission special representative on Iran.
Iran's judiciary announced "temporary" bans on three reformist weekly
newspapers, Sobh-e Omid, Mihan and Sepideh-e Zendegi were banned by the
Tehran justice department for "press offences on 24 October. Two days
prior to this, on 22 October, Qolam-Heidar Ebrahimbay-Salami, the managing
director of Hambastegi, was also forced to appear in court.
On 18 October the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance also
temporarily banned six weekly publications -- including Jahan-i Pezeshki
and Milad, for ignoring repeated warnings. Their cases will be referred to
the press court.
In November, the weekly Iran-e Javan was suspended by the press court on
the charge of publishing, "false news likely to disturb public opinion and
articles which pose a threat to public morals".
Also in early December, the son of Ayatollah Montazeri, Said was arrested
because he put the memories of his father on the Internet. Later that day,
the press court suspended the publication of the daily Ahrar for three
months and found its director Mohammad Hossein Kuzeh-Gar guilty of
printing false information. In addition, the Teheran court refused to
authorise 132 publications, some of which were submitted by high-ranking
members of the regime.
On 30 December Ali Afsahi, a cleric and editor of Cinema-Varzech was
condemned by a special court of Clergy to imprisonment. He had been
charged with, "insults of sanctities of Islam" following his commentaries
on two movies.
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1999 World Press Freedom Review
The tug-o-war between the minority right-winged factions in control of the
judiciary and security on one hand, and the Khatami followers on the
other, continued into 1999. Khatami is now said to have even more than the
70 percent support of the population he had when taking power in the 1997
landslide elections. Iran fought the battle for reform on the basis of
freedom of expression in 1999. Jameah was the bastion of press freedom
which had troubled the conservative opposition in 1998 but in this year
they had to cope with an outspoken independent press to the strength of
four. They were Neshat, the successor to Tous, which in turn was the
follower to Jameah. The remaining newspapers are Khordad, run by former
interior minister Abdullah Nouri; Sobhe Emrouz, run by presidential
adviser Saeed Hajjarian; and Zan (Woman), founded in 1998 by Faezeh
Hashemi. She is a daughter of former president President Akhbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani. As the name suggests, this is the first newspaper oriented
towards women.
On January 24, Zan was banned for two weeks. The ban was based on charges
made by the head of police security, Mohammad Naghi, after an article in
the daily accused Naghi of having been involved in an attack on Vice
President Nuri and Minister of Culture Ata'ollah Mohajerani in front of
Tehran University in September. This was a mere prelude to the complete
closure of Zan at the beginning of April for running part of a new year
message issued by former Empress Farah and for printing a religiously
offensive cartoon. To circumvent the ban it has been reproduced in
sections of the three other liberal newspapers.
On February 2, Gholam Hussein Zakeri, the managing director of the
bi-weekly Adineh, was found guilty of insult and dissemination of lies and
corrupt articles by a Teheran court, according to the official news agency
IRNA. Given twenty days to appeal, Zakeri was ordered to pay nine million
Rials in fines. In the same week, the Iranian newspaper quoted the former
Culture and Islamic Guidance Deputy Minister, Ahmad Bourqani, on the press
freedom situation in Iran in his farewell speech saying that it was like a
young tree about to be up-rooted. Shaaban Shahidi, the former head of the
external services of the state-run radio and also a close aide to Khatami,
took over the position. Bourqani's resignation was said to be negatively
received by the moderate press, as he had been closely associated with the
proliferation of new publications on the Iranian market since Khatami's
rise to power. A spate of newspaper closures combined with Bourqani's
resignation and revelations about police involvement in the murder of
intellectual at the end of the previous year got 1999 off to an uneasy
start. IPI expressed its deep concern about the clampdown on Iran's press
at the beginning of the year to President Khatami.
The media landscape in Iran is uneven, with a population of 65 million it
has a mere 1,000 publications which have a combined circulation of over
two million. The pro-Khatami English daily Iran News painted a bleak
picture of the situation in the run up to the press festival. The paper
reported that "instead of holding festivals, press officials should
institutionalise the legal position of the print media, so that the
weakest political turbulence would not inflict such grave damage on our
press."
On January 23, a bomb was thrown at the offices of Khordad newspaper
leaving two people injured, according to IRNA. They reported that
eyewitnesses saw two motorcyclists throw the bomb at the building of the
pro-Khatami Persian-language daily.
On February 26, the results of the municipal elections were overwhelmingly
in favour of pro-reformist Khatami candidates in what was hailed as the
freest and fairest election in
the Islamic Republic. Reformists accrued over 70 percent of seats in what
was the second consecutive defeat of conservatives and a resounding
victory for President Khatami. The turnout for the election was equally
impressive with 65 percent of the electorate casting their vote.
On February 28, IRNA reported that the Islamic Human Rights Commission
called for the detention of Hojjat ol-Eslam Mohsen Kadivar, a liberal
Islamic scholar, former aide to Khatami and a professor of philosophy. He
was accused of spreading propaganda against the Islamic republic,
confusing public opinion and indirectly insulting the late Ayatollah
Khomeini as a result of an article he published in Khordad on February 14.
On April 21, he was sentenced to eighteen months in prison. Culture and
Islamic Guidance Minister Ataollah Mohajerani said: "Kadivar's arrest is
the arrest of ideas".
Fereydoun Verdinejad, director of IRNA, and publisher of the Iran Press
Group, was detained for six hours and then released on 180 million rials
(US$ 60,000) bail on May 29. Mohammed Reza Zohdi, publisher of Arya, was
not as fortunate in meeting bail and was remanded in custody for
"publishing slanderous material, disturbing public opinion and exposing
military secrets", according to RSF.
At the beginning of June, Neshat editor Latif Safari and Jebheh editor
Kazemzadeh appeared in court. Kazemzadeh faced a complaint filed by
Safari, in which the Jebheh editor was accused of "defamation and
generating fear in the minds of the public."
The reformist weekly Hoviyat-é-Khish came under attack in June. Firstly,
Hossein Kashani, the director, was arrested in Tehran on June 16. The
following day Heshmatollah Tabarzadi, the weekly's editor-in-chief,
appeared before the same revolutionary court. The charges were based on
two articles; one relayed news about riots that took place over the arrest
of Abdullah Öcalan in the Iranian part of Kurdistan and the other was a
letter by the mullah Parvazi criticising the role of conservatives in the
spate of murders of intellectuals and journalists. The final blow came on
June 21, when Iranian TV reported that the Press Supervisory Board of the
Islamic Culture and Guidance Ministry had withdrawn the publication
licence for the weekly Hoviyat-e Khish.Conservative deputies submitted a
draft bill to the parliament in May with a view to tightening the reins on
the pro-reform media. The debate on the bill began in the parliament on
June 5. State radio quoted the Culture Minister Ataollah Mohajerani's
reaction to it: "The custodians of the press and (newspaper) editors have
not been consulted about this bill...In our view, this bill is not meant
to amend the press law, but to change its whole structure". President
Khatami's comment were of the
same ilk when it was raised at the cabinet earlier that week. On the first
reading the bill, out of 270 members, 125 MPs supported the measure, 90
voted against, and a crucial 55 abstained. In the new bill responsibility
for articles rests with the journalists or editor, instead of with the
publisher as was the case up to now. According to Radio Free Europe
accreditation will be more difficult. And furthermore, the bill recommends
that a Qom seminarian and the head of the Islamic Propagation Organisation
serve on the Press Supervisory Board, and that the Revolutionary Courts
are qualified to hear press offences. However, Article 168 of the
constitution only permits press courts to do so. Just a few hours after
the bill went through, courts shut down the pro-Khatami newspaper Salaam.
The paper, which had been pivotal in the Khatami's landslide victory in
1997, had apparently leaked a confidential report about rogue police
elements being involved in the murder of intellectuals in the previous
year, an accusation that was vehemently denied by the editor Abbas Abdi.
The charge was of violating Islamic principles, endangering national
security and disturbing public opinion. Morad Veissi, a journalist with
the newspaper was also arrested the same day. The suspension sparked six
days of riots throughout the country; an outburst of demonstrations by
Iranian students expressing their disdain for the crackdown on freedom of
expression in the Islamic Republic. The students were sharply and swiftly
dealt with by a number of forces -- generally the police, sometimes
plainclothes, the Islamic militia and even vigilantes. The conflict that
erupted was the worst seen in Iran since the1979 Islamic Revolution. At
least three students were murdered in clashes which resulted in the
dismissal of two senior Tehran police officials, according to the
Financial Times. The intelligence ministry withdrew the complaint against
Salaam on July 8 but the order banning the publications was not revoked.
IRNA reported that is was "for the sake of maintaining calm, avoiding
tension and backing the government's policies on political development and
legal press freedom". Calm was restored on July 14 but the events of this
time showed the frustration felt by the students, who have historically
played a pivotal role in the bringing about of change in Iran.
On July 25, Mohammad Mousavi-Khoeiniha, editor-in-chief of Salaam, was
convicted for publishing an allegedly classified document, slandering
provincial officials and linking members of parliament to a rogue secret
agent accused of masterminding the murder of several dissidents last year.
The eight-member jury -- all conservative clergy chosen by the judge
included three prominent hard-liners.
At a public appearance shortly after the closure of Salaam Khatami grinned
when asked by a journalist what he believed was going to happen to Salaam.
The journalist then asked him why he was grinning and the president
responded, "What do you want me to do, cry?"
The official news agency, IRNA, quoted the minister of culture and Islamic
guidance, Ataollah Mohajerani, at a press conference in August saying that
Salaam had been an outstanding newspaper for the past ten years and also
that he had regretted its closure. Commenting on the new press bill he
went on to say that more than 300 amendments to the press code had been
put together and that they would integrate the proposals made by media
representatives.
The Ayatollah Khamenei appointed a new chief of the judiciary in August,
Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi. He intimated that he would like to separate
press issues from the courts but this would cause certain consternation
with the conservatives who generally use the violation of Islamic
principles to justify silencing the voice of dissent.
On July 2, Kazem Shokri, editor of Emrooz, was arrested and charged with
having authorised an article headlined, "Two parallel lines do not cross
unless God wills it," which was alleged to be insulting to Islam. The
newspaper's publisher, Saeed Hajarian, was held earlier, but was released
on bail after he said that Shokri was responsible for publishing the
article.
On July 21, the Teheran Times reported that Kamilia Entekhabifard, Zan,
and two other reporters were arrested on arrival from the United States to
Iran. The editor of Jabheh, Masud Dehnamaki, also told the Teheran Times
that two of his journalists had been arrested the same week, they were
Reza Monjezipur and Soheil Karimi.
The pro-reform daily Neshat was suspended on September 5 for publishing
articles opposing capital punishment and suggesting the supreme leader Ali
Khamenei stay out of factional politics. The newspaper had a circulation
of about 200,000 and was particularly popular with intellectuals and the
youth. Then Latif Safari, director of the newspaper, received a
two-and-a-half year suspended sentence for "insulting basic tenets of the
Koran and sacred values". He was also banned from practising journalism
for five years but is appealing the courts decision.
Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, was
arrested on November 2 and bail was set at 500 million rials which is over
US$ 150,000, and for the second time since the closure of the newspaper,
he was summoned to court as a result of the same articles criticising the
death penalty in Neshat but also for attempting to forge faxes to cover up
his involvement in the publication of the articles. Shamsolvaezin was the
editor of the banned Jameah and Tous and after the closure of Neshat he
became the editor of another pro-reform newspaper Asr-e Azadegan. The
trial started on November 9. Shamsolvaezin' s lawyer, Mohammad Seyfzadeh,
was sentenced to five days in prison for "disturbing the order of the
court" during the trial and both men were fined US$ 5,000. At the court,
he refused to speak until a jury was present as Safari had been charged in
the absence of a jury. Shamsolvaezin openly criticised the charges and
appealed to President Khatami to lend support in the face of mounting
pressure by conservatives. He was sentenced to three years in prison.
Prior to his arrest he spoke to the Independent newspaper about his
imminent arrest saying "the conservatives are attacking me because they
think I want to run for parliament ... but only people who want power run
for parliament, I already have power, as a journalist. I am the voice of
civil society."
Two students at Amir Kabir Technical University in Teheran were arrested
at the end of September for invoking the 12th Imam, one of Islam's holiest
figures known to Shi'ites as the Lord of the Age, in a play published in
The Wave, a publication run by the Islamic association at the University.
The journal, with a circulation of about 200 was said to add fire to the
already heated debate this year on freedom of expression and freedom of
the press. One Ayatollah, Hossein Mazaheri, publicly said that such
publications should be punishable with death.
On October 11, Abdullah Nouri -- the major victor at the city elections in
Teheran earlier in the year, close adviser to President Khatami and
publisher of the pro-reform newspaper
Khordad -- was brought before a hardline clerical court on charges of
dissent. Nouri was ordered to appear before a court on October 20 to face
both political and religious charges and was subsequently imprisoned. The
charges included supporting Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri who was
under house arrest since 1997, insulting the late revolutionary leader
Ayatollah Khomeini, ridiculing Koranic law and supporting diplomatic ties
with the United States. Nouri had recently given up his seat at the city
council in
preparation for the parliamentary elections on February 18, 2000. On
November 1, Nouri's trial commenced and the 44-pages indictment against
him began.
On November 16, restrictions were eased against the major dissident cleric
Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri. He was permitted his first two
non-family visitors since he was accused of challenging the country's
supreme leader. The Former publisher of Khordad and the mentor to Nouri
was drawn into the public sphere again with the commencement of the court
case, one of the twenty counts against him being the publication of
Montazeri's views.
The judge, Mohammad Salimi, called for Nouri to terminate his defence on
November 11 and to submit a text version of it within ten days. The
verdict was reached on November 27 and Hojjatoleslam Abdollah Nouri was
sentenced to five years' imprisonment by the Special Court for the Clergy
(SCC) for being guilty of fifteen of the twenty counts brought against
him. Later in December, he announced that he refused to lodge an appeal at
the clerical court as it was not legal for that court to hear his case.
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1998 World Press Freedom Review
There are mixed reactions to the Iranian President Mohammad Khatami’s
first complete year in office. On the positive side he has relaxed
censorship on books and films and has licensed dozens of new publications.
226 new publications were licensed in Iran last year bringing the overall
total to 1138. Figures on circulation are equally promising with a total
of 2,900,000 as compared to 1,500,000 in the previous year. This is
however counterbalanced by conservatives who have the main power base in
the parliament. They are known, according to an Iranian IPI source, never
to condemn acts of violence against the press. There is also the influence
exerted by the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with comments such
as, "I am giving final notice to officials to act and see which newspapers
violate the limits of freedom".
The case concerning Faraj Sarkuhi was resolved with his release on January
28. Sarkuhi, the editor-in-chief of the literary monthly Adineh, had been
arrested on January 27, 1997. The journalist was convicted to one year in
prison for spreading "propaganda" against the Islamic Republic of Iran. He
was initially denied a passport but that was revoked in April allowing him
to travel freely.
An edition of the weekly Fakur was banned on February 10 by the Iranian
Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance. The edition in question had
published photographs of the White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Iran’s
leading legal authority, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, had warned journalists
against publishing "any articles or photograph contrary to Islamic
values," on February 9.
On February 11 the International Press Institute wrote to Mohammad
Khatami, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, expressing deep
concern about the fate of Morteza Firoozi, a prominent Iranian newspaper
editor. Firoozi, the former editor-in-chief of the English-language daily
Iran News, was arrested in May or June 1997 and held incommunicado for
several weeks. In October it was reported in the Iranian press that he was
being held on espionage charges. On January 28 of this year, the official
Iranian news agency IRNA announced that he had been sentenced to death.
IPI was informed that Firoozi’s appeal had been rejected by the Supreme
Court and that he was to be hanged within days. Firoozi, a frequent
commentator on Iranian politics, had earlier served as editor of the
Tehran Times, an English-language newspaper set up after the 1979 Islamic
revolution.
He helped establish Iran News in 1994. A source in Tehran revealed to PEN
that Firoozi’s case was referred back to the courts on June 16 and that
the decision had come from the Judiciary Head Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi.
Furthermore, according to this information, the Ayatollah Khamenei - said
to be the only person with the power to order a stay of execution in
Firoozi's case - sought advice from the Iranian National Security Council
on the case, and a re-trial was recommended by the Council. Highlighting
the weight of the world-wide pressure exerted on the Iran.
Akbar Ganji, the publisher of the liberal Rah-e No (New Path) monthly
magazine, was sentenced to one year in prison after being found guilty of
publishing "false news", the Islamic Revolution Court announced in a
statement on March 5. Nine months of the one-year sentence were suspended
for five years. Charges against Ganji were not officially announced but
press reports said he was arrested in early December after a speech in
which he compared hardline Islamist groups to fascists, which he denied.
Reports said that he had been accused of insulting supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but the evening newspaper Jameah (Society) said he
had been acquitted of that charge.
On May 10, Iran's official news agency, IRNA announced that Fereydoun
Verdinejad, its director general, was to appear in court on May 11 to
answer charges brought against him by a parliament deputy and a
conservative group. "Verdinejad was to appear in a press violations
inquiry court to answer as yet unannounced charges against him by private
persons and by a number of law enforcement officials," according to IRNA.
On June 5, Mohammad Yazdi, head of judicial matters, issued a severe
warning to moderate journalists accusing them of trying to create division
within Iranian society. Several senior military officials in the
Revolutionary Guards threatened the moderate daily Jameh with reprisals.
Ataollah Mohadjerani, Minister of Islamic Orientation, also criticised
Jameh for having published a photo which showed a drawing of former
president Abolhassan Bani Sadr, currently in exile in France. On June 10,
the Iranian justice system ordered the suspension of Jameh. The newspaper
had received criticism from conservatives in Iran partly due to its
support of Khatami. Jameh had its publishing license revoked and was fined
16 million rials (US$5300). Furthermore, the newspaper’s editor,
Hamid-Reza Jalai-Pour, was banned from holding a similar position for one
year and accused of having published "defamatory articles, untrue and
contrary to public moral order", directed against several members of the
regime. Before it was banned many accusations were made against the
newspaper for disseminating information that was anti-Islamic.
Ali-Mohammed Mahdavi-Khorami, director of the formerÊnewspaper
Gozarech-e-Rouz, was arrested and then incarcerated on June 13 and 14 for
having published an article quoting the Paris-based Arabic-language
magazine Al-Watan Al-Arabi about the transfer of funds out of the country
by Iranian officials. He was released on bail. Mahdavi Khorrami was banned
on June 14 for three years from owning or heading a publication. He was
also fined 12 million rials (US$4,000). The authorities said he was
sentenced because he published "falsehoods and material and images
offending public decency" and said that publication of the article was
"irresponsible". The editorial staff of Gozarech-e-Rouz, which was
published by several IRNA journalists, decided to cease publication until
the court had made a decision.
On July 29, Mohammad-Reza Zaéri, publisher of the weekly Khaneh was
arrested and imprisoned in Tehran. According to RSF he was accused of
"insulting Islam, the Shiite clergy and the Imam Khomeiny, and publishing
photos contrary to public decency". The photo in question showed a woman
(not wearing a veil) playing football, as well as a letter from a teenager
saying that he didn’t know anything about the Imam Khomeiny because he was
12 years old when the former leader died in 1989. One day before President
Khatami had said on public television that freedom of the press and
religion were "important principles" and that "they should be defended".
Then on August 6, RSF reported that the judiciary in Tehran revoked
Khaneh’s licence permanently. In addition, publisher Zaéri was given a
suspended six month prison sentence and fined 3 million rials (US$1700)
On August 1, the daily Tous was banned by the Tehran Justice Department
until further notice because it used the layout and typography of the
suspended daily Jameah. The next day, the court offered to revoke the
decision to ban Tous if it adopted a new layout and changed the size of
the newspaper. On August 2 the managing director of the publishing company
launched a new newspaper Atfab-e Emrouz as a successor to the banned Tous
which was itself a successor to the banned newspaper Jameah. On September
17 the newspaper Tous was then forced to close down for having published
articles detrimental to "the country’s national interests and security,"
pending an investigation. The police forced their way into the newspaper
printing premises to stop the presses on September 16. Members of the
paper’s staff underwent interrogation. They also arrested an editor,
Mashallah Shamsol-va-Ezine, the manager, Hamid Reza Jalei-Pour and
sub-editor, Mohammad Javadi-Hessar, and a staff writer Ebrahim Nabavi.
The closure came in the light of a speech made by Iran’s supreme leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who told government officials to deal with moderate
newspapers which he accused of abusing freedom of speech to weaken
people's Islamic beliefs. He remarked that "There are limits to
freedom...which are set by Islam. If these limits did not exist some
people would try to push the nation towards not believing in religion."
Hamid Reza Jalaipour, was released from custody on September 16 pending
further investigation of the charges against him. After his release he
revealed that he was kept in solitary confinement and not informed as to
what charges and what legal grounds he and his colleagues had been
arrested on. The remaining members of staff were then released on bail on
September 21.
In the same week Iran saw the suspension of two other weekly newspapers
Rah-e-No (New Way) and Tavana. Rah-e-No had written a series of articles
in the weeks leading up to its suspension questioning the authority of
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, they had also published an
article by dissident Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, in which the supreme
cleric said the supreme leader should only supervise state affairs and not
have paramount power. Initially, an Iranian judge said that the
journalists could have faced the death penalty as ‘mohareb’ or ‘those who
fight God’ for their journalistic activities.
On September 22, the Iranian president Mohammad Khatami announced that the
issue with Salman Rushdie should be considered ‘completely finished’
however, despite the President’s conciliatory tone he made no substantive
change in Iran’s position on the death sentence issued against the British
author. The Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi also told the British
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook at the United Nations in New York that Iran
would take no action to threaten Rushdie’s life, nor encourage any body
else to do so. Rushdie’s response was ‘It means everything, it means
freedom’. Optimism was counterbalanced by the Iranian officials
reiterating that the nine-year-old fatwa could only be revoked by the
person who issued it namely the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who died soon
after issuing it. Senior clerics and a majority of the Iranian parliament
called for the death order to be implemented despite the apparent
distancing of the Iranian government from the issue. One hardline student
group set a billion rial (US$333,000) bounty on the author’s head even
after assurances were given by the Foreign Minster Kharrazi. Similar
actions continued throughout the year dashing hopes of the author
returning to a normal life.
IRNA deputy director-general Mohammed Reza Sadegh and editor-in-chief
Ali-Reza Khosravi were arrested on September 22 for publishing news on
September 13 about the attempt on the life of Mohsen Rafiq-Doust, director
of the foundation responsible for managing the imperial family’s wealth
and the disbursement of welfare payments to victims of the Iran-Iraq war.
They were released the following day after the IRNA staff collected 100
million rials (US$33,000) for their bail. This coincided with 180 of the
270 Iranian parliamentarians voting in favour of putting journalists who
write against Islamic principles on trial for threatening national
security. It also proposed that the Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry,
along with the Information Ministry should ‘identify all those in the
press who have targeted the faith of the people to enable the judiciary to
deal with them within the Islamic penal code’.
The monthly Jameh-Salem was suspended on September 29, after being
convictioned by a Press Court in Tehran. The publisher Siavash Bouran was
handed down a one year suspended sentence and was ordered to pay a fine of
four millions rials (US$1,333). October 6 saw the suspension of the
moderate Islamist magazine Asr-e Ma (Our Era) for 6 months and the
managing editor Mohammad Salamati was fined three million rials (US$1,000)
‘for dissemination of fabrications and insults’. They also fined the
director of the newspaper Sobh three million rials and banned him from
press work for four months.
Pirouz Davani, a politician and editor-in-chief of the newspaper Pirouz,
disappeared at the end of August. According to RSF, the newspaper Kar e
Karagar reported rumours concerning his "execution" in its November 28
edition.
1998 was witness to a number of positive remarks from the moderate Iranian
President Khatami. In a broadcast on November 16 he called for more
transparency in state media, saying that otherwise "people will get
information and news from unofficial sources which possibly have no good
intentions". On November 25 he told a gathering of newspaper chiefs from
across the political spectrum that they should adopt the more positive
aspects of freedom otherwise it would be "driven underground" which would
lead to "social explosion". The Shi’ite cleric said that "freedom and
diversity of thought do not threaten the society’s security. Rather,
limiting freedom does so".
At a students’ day gathering in Tehran on December 7, President Mohammad
Khatami asked students to be patient and tolerant. He welcomed the
students calls for change and asked them to wait until ‘the law can take
over’. He also remarked that the onus lay with ‘the universities, the
press and the theology students...to create a civil society’.
The bodies of veteran opposition leader Dariush Forouhar and his wife,
Parvaneh, were found dead on November 22 in their home in Tehran. They had
been stabbed to death. The former labour minister and the head of the
small nationalist Iran Nation Party were known for their criticisms of
human and political rights violations. He was said to be involved in
organising support for the Kurdish separatist Abdullah Ocalan and was due
to have a meeting with a number of Kurds to organise a rally in front of
the Italian Embassy.
A new reformist political party was set up on December 6 to achieve
"freedom of thought, logic in dialogue and rule of law in social
behaviour" according to the daily newspaper Zan. The founding members of
the Islamic Iran Participation Front is made up of 100 political cultural
and political figures including the president’s two brothers, a
vice-president and four ministers. The party intend to take part in the
upcoming city and village election in 1999.
Abdollah Nouri, ousted as interior minister by conservatives in summer,
announced on November 29 that he was going to set up a new daily newspaper
with a view to supporting the moderate views of President Khatami. He said
he would use his publication for the defence of freedom and human rights.
A spate of chilling developments rounded off what initially appeared to be
a year of progress in Iran. On November 20, the writer Majid Sharif
disappeared and his body was found on November 24. Sharif was a journalist
with the monthly magazine Iran-e-Farda and wrote articles criticising
government polices. According to WAN he supported a more liberal approach
to Islam.
The writer-journalist Mohamad Mokhtari who disappeared on December 3 was
found dead in Tehran six days later according to RSF. He is thought to
have been strangled. He was known for his criticisms of the regime and was
frequently arrested for his stance in the opposition. He was in the
process of organising an association of writers, Kanoun, to generate
support for the promotion of liberal ideas.
The following day Mohammad Ja’frar Pouyandeh, an essayist and translator
disappeared. He had left his office to attend a meeting and never reached
the meeting, according to WiPC. On December 11 his body was found; he was
believed to have been strangled. Bringing the number of writers who have
been found dead to three. Like Mokhtari, Pouyandeh was also one of six
writers questioned in October in connection with a initiative to form
Kanoun. The January 6 edition of the London Guardian revealed that rogue
elements within the Iranian secret police were responsible for the murders
of the three writers.
Shortly after, on December 7 Ezzatollah Sahabi the editor of an opposition
magazine, Iran-e-Farda (Iran Tomorrow), was found guilty of insulting the
armed forces and publishing lies about a special clerical court. Sahabi
was a former minister in the early days of the Islamic revolution and
criticised conservatives who opposed President Khatami and his reforms
such as relaxing censorship. He was banned from writing for a year and
fined six million rials (US$2000).
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1997 World Press Freedom Review
IRANIAN GLASNOST? Hardly. The election of a new, more liberal President,
Mohammad Khatami, in the May 23 elections may have inspired optimists to
see new hopes of a more tolerant administration. But the truth is that the
Islamic republic's main institutions remain in the hands of the
arch-conservatives led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And under the new
Khatami regime, in a case which aroused international indignation, an
Iranian journalist, Faraj Sarkuhi, was jailed for a year for anti-state
propaganda after a closed trial - by no means an encouraging development.
Earlier in the year, under the former regime, an editor of a monthly
magazine had been found dead in Tehran City Coroner's Department mortuary
with multiple stab wounds to his chest. Sarkuhi, editor of the literary
magazine, Adineh (Friday), was sentenced to a year's imprisonment in
September.
Taking into account the time he had already spent in custody, he was
expected to be released at the beginning of February 1998. His son said he
had also been accused of espionage - a charge which carries a death
sentence - but had been cleared of the spying charge. Sarkuhi left a
message on the answering machine in the family home in Berlin telling his
wife and children that his trial was over and that he could receive
visitors in jail. The trial was condemned by press and human rights
organisations around the world, which said it fell far short of
international standards of justice. Sarkuhi was detained in south-western
Iran in February 1997, after allegedly trying to leave the country
illegally. He had been a frequent target of the repressive Tehran regime.
In September 1996, he was one of 12 writers detained at the home of a
banned literary magazine, Takapoo, blindfolded and taken to Tehran's
notorious Evin Prison. He was one of 134 Iranian writers who signed a 1994
Declaration calling for an end to censorship in Iran. (Another signatory
Ghaffar Hosseini, was found dead in his apartment in November 1996.)
Sarkuhi mysteriously disappeared on November 4, 1996, on his way to
Germany to visit his wife.
Although Iranian officials insisted that he had boarded his plane, he
never arrived in Germany. There was serious concern for his well-being, in
view of his past mistreatment by the Tehran authorities. In the end,
Sarkuhi re-appeared at Tehran airport on December 20, 1996, and gave an
interview to the national and international press stating that he had gone
to Germany in order to obtain custody of his children. However, shortly
after he was re-arrested in January 1997,a letter by him was published in
which he confirmed that he had not left Iran in November, after all, but
that he had been detained by the Iranian intelligence services. The letter
also claimed that he had been subjected to torture an forced to declare
against his will that he gone to Germany. Sarkuhi's plight strained ties
between Iran and the West. The German Foreign Minister, Klaus Kinkel,
cited uncertainty about Sarhuki's fate as one of the factors preventing
the European Union from restoring normal ties with Tehran and sending back
ambassadors withdrawn as part of the downgrading earlier in 1997. Swept to
power in a landslide victory in May, President Katami - a moderate Moslem
Shi'ite cleric - said that the time was ripe to ensure more democracy.
However, he insisted that this had to be done while defending the Islamic
government against its enemies.
He has not backed away from his promises to introduce greater social and
economic freedoms. "To provide channels to convey people's needs to the
state, we need organised political parties, social associations and an
independent free press," the President said in a televised address on
August 13. (Political parties have been banned since Iran's 1979
revolution, and the government has kept a tight grip on media freedoms,
but factions loyal to the Islamic state have been allowed to set up
political organisations and religious associations. Katami said he had
chosen a woman Vice-President - the first since the revolution - in a sign
that he was determined to fulfil at least some of the hopes for a freer
society. Iran's artistic community welcomed the appointment of a new
Culture Minister who promised to ease restrictions on cultural life in the
Islamic republic. Ataollah Mohajerani won a required vote of confidence
from Iran's Parliament on August 21, despite coming under fire from
conservative deputies who accused him of being a liberal willing to resume
ties with the "arch-enemy," the United States. The appointment of
Mohajerani - a 53-tear-old historian and university professor - to head
the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance was seen as crucial for
President Khatami's programme to inject new freedoms into the 18-year-old
revolutionary state. Mohajerani's jurisdiction will include what kinds of
media, books, film, music and other artistic pursuits will be permitted in
the country of 60 million people, which is still led by Moslem clerics.,
Reuters quoted a book publisher, Mehdi Fakhrizdeh, as saying: "This is a
huge development, and things will definitely move towards the better,
providing the pressure groups do not interfere. This is my concern,
because they always managed to evade legal prosecution." Jamshid Arjmand,
59, an author and film critic, said: "I am very optimistic and glad, but
like any wise person, I don't expect instant changes ... One should expect
every possible hindrance, but not as severe and extensive as in the past."
One film director declared: "Censorship has gone crazy in decent years.
For example, we are not allowed to show a woman smoking a cigarette, even
though she is the villain of the film." Mohajerani himself pledged more
freedom - but on December 9, he told a group of Western journalists that
he rejected calls to scrap literary censorship. He said that Iran's
Constitution outlawed writings hostile to religion, and authors were
expected to refrain from pornography and writing about sex. "They
shouldn't think they can publish anything they like " he said. Asked when
Iranians would be permitted to have satellite dishes and choose what they
watched on television, Mohajerani replied: "I myself watch these satellite
TV stations, and have a dish here in my office. I was one of the opponents
of this Bill in Parliament, because I believe the government should not
interfere so much in people's lives."
Nevertheless, he added, there was no hope of abolishing the law banning
satellite dishes during the current Parliament. There was a tragic
incident earlier in the year, under the former regime. On March 29,
Ebrahim Zalzadeh, editor of the monthly magazine, Meyar (The Standard),
was found dead in the Tehran mortuary with stab wounds to the chest. He
had disappeared in February. An Iranian newspaper reported on April 12
that Zalzadeh had been killed by thieves after being kidnapped and robbed.
However, other reports suggested that Zaladeh had been arrested by
Ministry of Information officials and later killed. Mayar had frequently
criticised the government's censorship policies. Zaladeh was reportedly
one of the eight writers and publishers who had offered to share in the
punishment of Abbas Maroufi, editor of the magazine, Gardoun, who was
sentenced to receive 25 lashes in February 1996. On April 10, a court in
the holy city of Mashhad banned Mohammad Sadeq Javadi Hessar, editor of
the weekly magazine, Tous, from all journalistic work for 10 years for
publishing an article claiming that Iranian universities were more Islamic
than Moslem seminaries. He was also also fined three million rials (about
US$1,000) after being convicted of causing public confusion and provoking
antagonism between universities and seminaries. A colleague said he
believed Javadi Hessar was being atteged because Tous "is the only paper
that supports Khatani in this region." In 1995, the editor had been
sentenced to 20 lashes and six months in jail on charges including
slander, following an earlier lawsuit against his magazine - but that
conviction had been quashed on appeal. At least two new newspapers were
launched in Iran during 1997.
Iran Daily, the Islamic republic's fourth English-language newspaper,
appeared on May 21, two days before the election. The eight-page tabloid
will concentrate on domestic and regional economic affairs. The newspaper
is produced by the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). It
competes with Iran News, Kayhan International and Tehran Times. On July
26, Iran saw the launch of its first Arabic-language newspaper, al-Wefaq.
Iran's official language is Persian, but the aim of the new publication is
to forge friendship with Arab states. In February this year, an Iranian
foundation increased the reward for the killing of the Anglo-Indian
author, Salman Rushdie, to US$2.5 million. The 15th Khordad Foundation
first offered the reward in 1989, after Iran's late leader, Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa (religious edict) imposing the death
sentence on Rushdie for alleged blasphemy against Islam in his novel, "The
Satanic Verses."