The closure of 14 pro-reform papers on April 23-24 was no surprise. Having resoundingly lost the Majles elections in February, the ultra-conservative faction will do anything to either prevent the new Majles from convening, or to make it ineffective. The reformist press was the initial target and for the last two weeks was the object of a concerted campaign.
First the television, controlled by the religious ruler Ali Khamenei, showed a highly biased film of a Berlin conference, invited by the Heinrich Boll Institute and attended by some pro-reform journalists, writers and religious figures. The film was cynically skewed to inflame religious opinion and paint the participants in an anti-Islamic light.
Two days later the Revolutionary Guards, having been given the nod by Khamenei’ under whose direct command they operate, warned that once the time for “smiles and tolerance” is over “revolutionary violence… will be put in place with a speed beyond imagination… Then enemies, big and small will feel the sledge-hammer of the revolution on their skull and for ever stop their plots and treachery”. It was unambiguous.
On April 20 Khamenei’ spoke to a large gathering of Basij (mobilisation) forces:“10 or 15 newspapers are being directed from the same centre” and “are the bases of the enemy. They are performing the same task as the BBC radio and Voice of America as well as the British and American and Zionist television”. “This is a form of charlatanism”, he said. This was his second attack on reformists. He had used the previous Friday Prayer platform to praise “lawful” violence. These were alongside a carefully orchestrated nation-wide uproar by Khamenei’s faction against the journalists who had attended the Berlin conference. The Bazaar was told to close in protest, the seminaries held rallies and shut down.
Akbar Gangi, whose disclosures on the serial killings have so inflamed the ultra-conservatives [see this issue] was arrested on his return from the conference. Latif Safari, publisher of the previously banned Neshat, had his appeal against a two and a half year prison sentence rejected. Another Neshat editor Mashallah Shamsolvae’zin, was already in prison. In Ghazvin, a woman journalist Fatemeh Kulahi was arrested.
The elections to the 6th Majles in February showed how totally isolated the ultra-conservative faction is in the eyes of the country as a whole [see editorial this issue]. With its back to the wall and aware that time is not on its side, it will do anything to either prevent the new Majles from convening, or to emasculate it. Already the Expediency Council, the highest authority in the land outside the religious ruler, has decreed that the Majles cannot investigate political, economic and security institutions directly under the command of Khamenei’.
The next chapter in this creeping coup d’etat by the ultra-conservatives was the closure of fourteen papers “by order” [inset] for “denigrating Islam and religious elements” - the first time in nearly half a century such an “emergency” measure was used. There is evidence that further attacks on the press are in the offing. Who are the complainants against the reformist press?
There is Ali Fallahian, former interior minister, and mastermind of numerous murders of Iranians inside and outside the country, a man indicted in absentia by a Berlin court investigating the murder of Kurdistan Democratic Party leaders in 1992. Then there is Mesbah Yazdi, who gave the fatwa permitting the serial murders, and Ruhollah Hosseinian, also a senior cleric, who was closely linked to the serial murders in Teheran in the winter of 1998, and with at least 80 other deaths inside and outside the country [see this issue]. Abolghasem Khasali, former member of the Council of Guardians said in a sermon recently “wherever you find these unbelievers kill them”. Mobasheri head of the Revolutionary Court had ordered the massacre of political prisoners in 1988. There were also the radio-television network and the Revolutionary Guards Corps – both directly controlled by Khamenei’.
These “grey excellencies”, to use Ganji’s now famous term, have been central to the apparatus of terror operating at the behest of the religious ruler and the ultra-conservative faction. Theirs is the supra-legal arm of the state terror apparatus, also controlled by the same faction. It is brought out to play whenever the legal security-judicial arm cannot act, for whatever reason. These are people whose crimes are neither qualitatively, nor quantitatively, different from general Pinochet’s. Yet Mesbah Yazdi, for example, moves in and out of the United Kingdom and other countries at will.
In this tightening noose on the reform movement in Iran the radio-television network (IRIB) occupies a pride of place. This institution has been systematically orchestrating the attacks on the reform movement, inciting bigotry, spreading lies and half-truths, mobilising the most backward segments of society against reform, and in a word creating an atmosphere of hysteria.
The IRIB is not new to this role. In the months leading up to the serial murders, it was its serial programme “hovviat” (identity) which vilified the most respected writers, poets and intellectuals of the country. This, and similar programmes, were directed by Khamenei’s office and the ministry of information, and masterminded by the shadowy gang who later transpired had been involved in nearly 100 murders. Today the gang is supposedly out of the picture, but the machinery of vilification continues, unabated.
Can the international community do anything to prevent the country slipping back to the dark old days? Effective opposition to the highly focused moves, by a determined and united faction with control over virtually all the major institutions of power, may not be easy. Experience shows that pressure from outside the country helps the reform movement inside the country to counter the totalitarian schemes.
Journalist and writers’ unions and all organisations defending freedom of speech and expression must strongly condemn the closures. More specifically sanctions should be placed on the propaganda machinery of the Islamic Republic – and especially on the radio television network – a tool in the hands of the Khamenei’ faction. Any co-operation with IRIB, including access to international news, sport and entertainment media, as well as access to satellite broadcasting has to be targeted.
We call on all journalists, writers, organisations devoted to free speech and human rights, the United Nations, the European and other democratically elected parliaments to put the greatest pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran to stop its suppression of freedom of expression and to remove the ban on the press.
And the perpetuators of crimes against the Iranian people, such as Yazdi and Fallahian should not be allowed to move freely in the international arena. The precedence of Pinochet should be a warning to those involved in crimes against humanity – they should not feel safe if they set foot outside the country that protects them.
In the meantime, we should put whatever means at our disposal, without petty considerations, to get the voice of the internal opposition heard outside, and more importantly, inside Iran.
Daily:
Gozaresh-e
Rouz (today's report)
Bamdad-No (the new morning)
Aftab-e Emrouz (today's sun)
Payam-e Azadi (the message of freedom)
Fath (victory)
Arya
Assr-e Azadegan (the era of free thinkers)
Azad (free)
Sobhe Emruz
(morning today)
Akhbar-e
Eqtesad (economic news)
Weekly:
Payam-e Hajar
(message of hajar)
Aban
Arzesh (value)
Monthly:
Iran-Farda
(Iran tomorrow)