Media in Iran
Contrary to the allegations which attempt to play down the dictatorial nature of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the regime is in its highest degree of its totalitarian identity.
Alone, what concerns the Iranian media; we have a very long and black record of the regime against media and journalists.
Only two months ago, the General Prosecutor of Tehran, Mr. Saeed Mortazavi, the famous killer of Ms. Zahra Hashemi, an Iranian- Canadian journalist, and the Islamic Revolution tribunals ordered the closure of Ham Mihan (compatriot), a newspaper representing some “outsiders”. The paper had reappeared in May after an absence of seven years under the ownership of Mr. Karbaschi, a former Mayor of Tehran.
At the same time, ILNA, another “outsider” agency stopped working following the forced resignation of its director, Mr. Mas’oud Heydari because he defended, within the constitution, workers’ rights.
What happens in Iran has roots in “unbeliever”-conspiracies, “there are some signs of a creeping coup in the press”, Mr. Mohammad Hossein Saffar-Harandi, the Islamic Guidance and Culture Minister had warned one day after the closure of Ham Mihan.
“When we say a creeping coup in the press, it means a person is moving within a framework of an action to overthrow (the system)”, Mr. Saffar-Harandi, a former deputy Editor at the hard line dailyy “Keyhan” had said, adding: “When we say coup, it does not mean that some people in a garrison prepare an attack. It means people who are trying to destabilize the regime, the Government”.
Although, the intendancy of media under the IRI has been always strictly relative, but now a wave of crackdown accusing a “creeping coup” is a further policy of repression for curbing the “independent” media with direct orders of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.
As I described in a previous article, “On 16 July 2007, two Kurdish journalists, Mr. Adnan Hassanpour and Mr. Abdolvahed (Hiva) Boutimar were sentenced to death by an Islamic tribunal in Marivan, a Kurdish city in the north-west Iran”.
They are to be brought to the scaffold in the coming days. Judiciary spokesman, Mr. Ali Reza Jamshidi, confirmed that these two journalists have been sentenced to death, state media reported on Tuesday, and 31 of July.
At a trial behind closed doors, the journalists were found guilty of “activities subverting national security, spying, and interviews with foreign news media including the Voice of America”. These “accusations” were cited by the prosecution and, amazingly, confirmed by the journalists’ lawyers, Sirvan Hosmandi and Mohammad Saleh Nikbakht — who seems to play rather a public prosecutor than their lawyer! –
The two journalists were sentenced on the charge of “mohareb,” (fighter against Islam) to death. The term “Mohareb”, which describes a major crime against Islam and the God’s state of the IRI, is a routine term used to justify execution of political activists since the IRI rules.
Death sentence for “profane” writers and journalists is reminiscent of Khomeini’s death fatwa on Anglo-Indian novelist Salman Rushdie more than a decade ago. The two Kurdish journalists are in fact the first Iranian journalists being accused of “Mohareb”.
Last year, another IRI’s senior cleric, Sheikh Fazel Lankarani, issued a death fatwa on an Azeri journalist, Rafiq Taqi, because of his “profane” article “humiliating Prophet Mohammad”.
“Creeping coup” was used by Mr. Mehdi Kalhor, one of the Ahamadinejad’s advisors, adding that “some newspapers inside the country are propagating and complotting ideas of the “enemies of Islam”. They are the front runners, the platoons of the enemies’’ cultural assault on our Islamic values and sacred system. They are in a creeping coup against the Government”.
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there will be no justification oevr IRI’s act, if it executes these journalists for the sake of their interviews or else.
but, for humiliating or insulting the holy figures, I cant understand why it should be allowed in the name of democratic values/principles. in the case of danish cartoons, Dr. Soroush made a very excellent description of the case, read it here:
http://www.drsoroush.com/Persian/By_DrSoroush/P-CMB-13841118-CheBeAtasheAzadiCheBeAtasheGheyrat.html
Didn’t the Iranian authorities also shut down a newspaper for insulting Umar ibn al-Khattab?
Iranian Journalists are Victims of a Belief-System
The two arrested Kurdish journalists were doing their jobs to inform their audience about what they judged correct, this the same right that Muslim journalists require in non-Islamic countries. Several other journalists in IRI’s prisons are waiting for heavy charges.
I personally believe that religion, especially Islam, is a product of man, not divinity, but also believe that Muslims should not be discriminated in the world because of their religion. They can practice their faith in confined privacy as long as peacefully. As a political means, Islam can be criticised and ironised like any other political ideology.
Mr. Soroush, is another old collaborator of the IRI, he was responsible for the so-called Islamic Cultural Revolution which purged many students, professors, and closed down the universities during several years in Iran.
Apart from a minority of insider/outsider devotees of Islam, Mr. Soroush and his like cannot be pattern-models of a great majority of Iranians who are fed up with any idea with Islam attached to it.
but, for humiliating or insulting the holy figures, I cant understand why it should be allowed in the name of democratic values/principles
Because human rights are more important than God.
So Finnpundit, if someone makes a caricature of people falling from the Twin Towers, you don’t think anyone would be outraged?
I know there are far-right loonies who want Michael Moore dead.
Finnpundit
Political Islam along with any totalitarian system share much more than just an ideological affinity, they also the belief of being irrefutable “unique”. For this belief they commit any crime.
If a Nazi swastika can be symbolically thrown in a garbage can why it should not be the same for the “holy” figures of political Islam?
So Finnpundit, if someone makes a caricature of people falling from the Twin Towers, you don’t think anyone would be outraged?
Of course, but nobody can deny them their right to express themselves.
If a Nazi swastika can be symbolically thrown in a garbage can why it should not be the same for the “holy” figures of political Islam?
Exactly.