(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has denounced the ongoing harassment of Iran’s reformist press. The leading daily newspaper “Yas-e no” was banned for 10 days on 29 September 2003 for defying a request to print for a second day the same “right of reply” article by hardline Tehran Prosecutor Saïd Mortazavi. The paper eventually agreed and was […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has denounced the ongoing harassment of Iran’s reformist press. The leading daily newspaper “Yas-e no” was banned for 10 days on 29 September 2003 for defying a request to print for a second day the same “right of reply” article by hardline Tehran Prosecutor Saïd Mortazavi. The paper eventually agreed and was allowed to resume publishing on 1 October.
“This situation would be a joke if it were not for the alarming state of press freedom in Iran,” said RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard. “The judiciary, which is controlled by hardliners, has been busy shutting down newspapers, summoning journalists and making spurious investigations in cases such as the murder of photographer Zahra Kazemi. Now it is using the principle of ‘right of reply’ to fill up the space in reformist papers.”
Mortazavi, who was formerly head of the Press Court, cited Article 23 of the press law, which provides for a “right of reply”, with an article accompanied by the offending article’s headline, in the same place in the paper, and without edits, but limited to twice the length of the original article.
Mortazavi sent several rebuttals to articles in the paper about the Kazemi case and the prison conditions of journalist Abbas Abdi, who has been in jail for several months (see IFEX alerts of 1 August, 24 June, 30 and 23 April, 13 March and 8 January 2003, 28 and 6 November 2002). The latest reply, which occupied two-thirds of the 16-page paper, was published, with a few edits, on 27 September.
The judge objected to the cuts and complained that the “right of reply” was positioned too closely to reports about Abdi’s hunger strike. He demanded that it be republished in its entirety in the next day’s issue of the paper, starting on the front page. The paper initially refused but subsequently yielded to the demand.
There have been other incidences of media harassment in recent days. On 28 September, the Tehran Revolutionary Court handed journalist Fariba Davoudi Mohajer a three-year suspended jail sentence. Mohajer works for the reformist press. He wrote articles that were denounced as “anti-government propaganda” and “harming state security”. He was also accused of signing a petition to release prisoners.
On 27 September, the same court sentenced Mohsen Sazgara, editor of the Internet website Alliran and the closed reformist daily “Jameh”, to one year in prison for “insulting the Supreme Guide of the Islamic Republic,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His lawyer said his trial was held in camera and that the court did not specify the charges of which Sazgara was found guilty.
During the week of 22 September, Eskandar Deldam, a journalist with the suspended weekly “Tabarestan”, was summoned by the State Prosecutor’s Office after writing a satirical article about the state broadcaster, which is directly controlled by Ayatollah Khamenei.
