(RSF/IFEX) – The following is a 6 June 2001 RSF press release: 6 June 2001 Presidential Election: RSF calls upon the future president to make a commitment to press freedom and to put an end to imprisonment of journalists With only two days remaining before the presidential election, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF – Reporters Without […]
(RSF/IFEX) – The following is a 6 June 2001 RSF press release:
6 June 2001
Presidential Election: RSF calls upon the future president to make a commitment to press freedom and to put an end to imprisonment of journalists
With only two days remaining before the presidential election, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF – Reporters Without Borders) is calling upon the ten candidates, most notably Mohammed Khatami, who is regarded as the favourite, to make a commitment to freedom of the press. “The press is the best yardstick for democracy. Since 1997, when the current president was elected, the media have had great freedom of expression and have become an important arena for political debate. But over the past year, conservatives have made attacks on this freedom by arresting journalists and shutting down reformist publications. In the event that Mohammed Khatami is re-elected, we ask him to support the press, no longer just through words, but also through action aimed at stopping the offensive led by the regime’s hard-liners,” announced Robert Ménard, general secretary of the organisation. RSF considers the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to be one of the thirty predators of press freedom around the world.
Today, Iran is the world’s largest prison for journalists, with twenty-five media professionals behind bars.
RSF calls upon the future president, as guarantor of the Constitution (under article 133), to make a commitment to:
– putting an end to the completely arbitrary arrests of media professionals, that have been increasing over the past year;
– denouncing conditions whereby journalists are tried without a jury;
– putting an end to the partiality of judgements handed down by judges who carry out the dual functions of judge and public prosecutor;
– proposing a new press law to the Parliament guaranteeing freedom from discrimination on the grounds of language, religion or political opinion. The current law, passed on 17 April by the out-going Parliament (dominated by conservatives) stipulates that “persons
sentenced by revolutionary courts for ‘threatening national security’, or those who ‘spread propaganda hostile to the Islamic regime’, may in no way gain authorisation for employment by a publication.” This means that a journalist who has already been sentenced may never again practise their profession. Other sections of the present law prohibit “all direct or indirect foreign aid for newspapers” and the publishing of articles that criticise the Constitution.
Furthermore, RSF calls upon the future president to amend the Constitution by removing Article 24, which provides that “publications and newspapers are free to express any opinion except for those that undermine the foundations of Islam and public decency”. Such a vague formulation is open to interpretation, and so the slightest criticism of the regime may be punished under the law.
Finally, the organisation calls upon the future president, elected by universal suffrage and thus with a legitimate mandate, to firmly denounce the conservative’s initiatives against the reformist press by reaffirming support for all imprisoned journalists and by demanding that they be freed immediately and unconditionally.
