Iran Jailing Journalists and Blocking Websites

Two articles published in autumn 2004 suggest a trend toward tighter restriction on media voices in Iran. That is, the authors cite evidence indicating that the Iranian government is increasingly arresting journalists who report on women's rights and other culturally sensitive or contentious topics, as well as blocking pro-democracy websites.

1. "Iran: Journalist Detained in Internet Crackdown", Human Rights Watch, October 15 2004:
   

   Excerpt: "The arrest of journalist and internet writer Omid Memarian continues a disturbing crackdown on journalists and internet writers in Iran...Memarian, a well-known figure in Iran's nongovernmental organization community, has been detained without charge...Memarian has written extensively on youth-related issues in Iran and was a candidate in last year's election for Tehran's City Council. He maintains a Web-log dedicated to a range of social, cultural and civil society issues in Iran. Human Rights Watch said that Memarian's detention comes on the heels of numerous arrests of journalists and internet writers over the past month, a negative trend for online expression. 'These developments do not bode well for the future of freedom of expression in Iran, especially on the internet,'...", according to Joe Stork, Washington, DC (USA) director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division.
   

2. "Iran Jails More Journalists and Blocks Web Sites", The New York Times (Note: a free subscription process is required to access this article), by Nazila Fathi, November 8 2004.
   

   Summary: Many rights advocates had turned to the Internet after the judiciary shut down more than 100 pro-democracy newspapers and journals in recent years. The number of Internet users in Iran has jumped since 2000 from 250,000 to 4.8 million; as many as 100,000 web logs ("blogs") operate, and some of them are political. As part of its crackdown, the government has blocked hundreds of political sites and web logs ("blogs") - among them, 3 major pro-democracy websites that support President Mohammad Khatami (blocked in August 2004). A senior cleric, Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi, said that sites will continue to be blocked if they "insult sacred concepts of Islam, the Prophet and Imams." When another wave of arrests began in September 2004, authorities arrested the father of one web technician, who had taken refuge in the Netherlands. That technician's father had created his own blog and had also helped run one of the political websites.
   
   

   This article reports jailings of journalists who work in other media, as well. For example, Mahboubeh Abbas-Gholizadeh, the editor of the magazine Farzaneh and a women's rights advocate, was arrested November 1 2004 after she returned from London, where she had attended the European Social Forum. Fereshteh Ghazi, a journalist for the daily newspaper Etemad, who also writes about women's issues, was arrested 4 days earlier; she wrote a letter in support of a woman who had been sentenced to death for killing a senior security official whom the woman accused of trying to rape her.