Journalists Arrested Daily in Iran

By Meredith Lee-Clark
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

TEHRAN, Iran – The BBC, Newsweek, and the Washington Times are among several western news organizations that have recently announced that their correspondents in Iran have disappeared or been detained, allegedly as a result of the Iranian government’s crackdown on media freedom.

Reporters Without Borders, an international organization that advocates for freedom of the media, condemned the disappearances, along with the arrests of several Iranian journalists.  The organization also reported that the entire editorial staff of Kalemeh Sabz, a newspaper owned by opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, was arrested by plain clothes agents from the office of Tehran’s prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi.  Mortazavi has previously come under international scrutiny due to implications of torture, illegal detentions, and the coercion of false confessions.

“Iran is in the midst of a violent and arbitrary crackdown on reformist protesters that has already claimed lives and has led to over a thousand arrests,” said Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch.  “The role of Mortazavi in the crackdown suggests that the authorities are preparing to bring trumped-up charges against its opponents.”

Some Iranian reporters have begun to publicly advocate for media freedom.  On June 23, 180 Iranian journalists wrote an open letter to Iran’s government and the public, protesting the “deplorable and critical” state of Iran’s media and calling upon the government to abide by the Iranian constitution and to allow reporters to do their duty.  As of June 25, the Committee to Protect Journalists estimated that approximately forty journalists and media workers had been arrested by the Iranian government since the election on June 12.  One media outlet has declared that Iran is now the world leader in imprisoning journalists.

President of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pottering, said that he planned to visit Iran, on an invitation of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.  Ebadi told Reporters Without Borders that she has urged Pottering and the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, to condemn Iran’s media repression and to investigate human rights abuses against journalists.

For more information, please see:

Committee to Protect Journalists – More Journalists Arrested in Iran; CPJ Seeks Their Release – 25 June 2009

Reporters Without Borders – Confessions, Arrests and a Campaign Against the Media – 25 June 2009

Washington Times – Washington Times Reporter Arrested in Iran – 24 June 2009

Human Rights Watch – Iran: Violent Crackdown on Protestors Widens – 23 June 2009

IFEX – Three More Journalists Detained, BBC Correspondent to be Deported – 22 June 2009

Author: Impunity Watch Archive