[Mb-civic] FW: RWB: Iranian New Year starts as badly as ever for the press

[Golsorkhi]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 12:03:59 -0400
Subject: RWB: Iranian New Year starts as badly as ever for the press

RWB

Iran | 7.04.2005

Iranian New Year starts as badly as ever for the press

Reporters Without Borders today deplored a series of new negative
developments for press freedom that accompanied the arrival of the
Iranian New Year in March.

  On returning from their New Year vacation, 80 conservative
parliamentarians called for reformist journalist Massih Alinejad to be
banned from entering parliament. The president of the Association of
Iranian journalists, Ali Mazroi, was banned from leaving the country.
And officials closed two magazines.

  "Iranian journalists are no longer allowed to express themselves
outside the country any more than inside," the press freedom
organization said. "The conservatives, who dominate the country's
religious, political and judicial institutions, are doing everything
possible to silence dissent. We call on the parliamentary speaker to
restore Alinejad's rights since he has committed no crime."

  Condemning the closure of the magazines Jameh Nou and Karnameh,
Reporters Without Borders called on the Ministry of Islamic Guidance to
allow them to resume publishing. The organization also stressed that
the Iranian authorities should not prevent a journalist from travelling
abroad or participating in international conferences. Mazroi should be
able to go abroad without being harassed, the organization said,
calling for the immediate return of his passport.

  It was the publication of their pay slips that prompted the
parliamentarians to turn on Alinejad. A parliamentary reporter for the
reformist daily Hambasteghi and the news agency ILNA, he was banned
from parliament on 4 April. For much of the past year, he had been the
target of a smear campaign by parliamentarians who criticized his dress
as well as "his rudeness and impoliteness."

  Conservative members of parliament accused him of stealing their pay
slips from their mail pigeonholes although, in fact, it was a reformist
MP who showed Alinejad his pay slip. Since the ban, Alinejad has won
the support of several newspapers, which have announced that they will
not report any parliamentary news for a day in protest. The Iranian
lawyer and Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi has said she will defend
Alinejad although no legal initiative has yet been taken.

  Mazroi was deprived of his passport and prevented from leaving the
country on 6 April as he was about to fly to Denmark to attend a
meeting of the International Federation of Journalists. The airport
police did not explain their action. Last year, Mazroi wrote several
open letters condemning the arrest of his son, Hanif Mazroi, who has
since been released.

  The monthly Karnameh was closed by the Ministry of Islamic Guidance on
7 April for publishing news and poems deemed "immoral." The ministry
said it intended to prosecute the magazine.

  Jameh Nou, a magazine targeted at intellectuals, was banned by the
Ministry of Islamic Guidance a few days before the Iranian New Year, on
8 March. The grounds given by the Press Control Commission for the ban
was the fact that the magazine was not coming out regularly. Jameh Nou
has called for political and religious reforms. Its editor, Ftameh
Kamli Sara, is the wife of independent journalist Emadoldin Baghi, who
spent several years in prison, above all for articles advocating free
expression and a modern vision of Iran.

Reporters Without Borders defends imprisoned journalists and press
freedom throughout the world, as well as the right to inform the public
and to be informed, in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. Reporters Without borders has nine
national sections (in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain,
Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom), representatives in
Abidjan, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Montreal, Moscow, New York,
Tokyo and Washington and more than a hundred correspondents worldwide.

  © Reporters Without Borders 2005
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http://www.rsf.org/print.php3?id_article=13143

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