23 June 2009
A report on the RFE/RL web site:
A woman named Neda has become an icon of the ongoing antigovernment protests in Iran. Millions of people in Iran and throughout the world have now seen a graphic amateur video of Neda’s apparent death on a street in central Tehran, after having been shot in the chest while attending one of the rallies with her father.
Neda Agha Soltan, who was reportedly killed when hit by a bullet during a protest in Tehran on June 20. Some in Iran are calling for June 20, the day of the violent crackdown on protesters that was apparently Neda’s last, to become known as “Neda’s Day.” Neda mean “voice” in Persian. Neda was reportedly buried hastily in Tehran’s Behesht Zahra cemetery on June 21. According to unconfirmed reports, authorities banned a mourning ceremony for her at a mosque in the capital today.
The tragic images have served as a reminder of the prominent roles that thousands of women from all walks of life are playing in the protests against Iran’s recent presidential election, which they believe was rigged.
‘Take To The Streets’
Indeed, it was a woman, Effat Hashemi, the wife of former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was among the first to call for public protests in the event of fraud. Her call was captured in a video, released early last week, that shows her speaking to reporters after casting her ballot on June 12. Reporter: “What is your advice to the supporters of the candidates after election day?” Hashemi: “They must take to the streets if there is fraud.” It’s not clear if Hashemi participated in any of the protests, but her daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, did — and was briefly detained for her actions. Yasaman, a 42-year old housewife, isn’t famous, but she, too, participated in the rallies. She tells RFE/RL that she is now sitting at home, expecting to be detained. “They’re coming for everyone, one by one,” she says. She laughs and says she’s not scared.
Yasaman and many other Iranian women say they voted for Mir Hossein Musavi or fellow reformist Mehdi Karrubi because they were hoping for change. Both of the presidential candidates addressed women’s issues in their campaigns and both promised more rights to Iranian women.
Wife Also Campaigned
Musavi appeared at campaign rallies with his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, a former university chancellor and an adviser to former President Mohammad Khatami. Rahnavard had actively participated in the campaign by giving speeches, interviews, and writing articles. In the last week, she has reportedly met twice with students and told them that Musavi will not give up his defense of people’s rights.
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad also pledged to grant women more rights and is said to have had some support among women. One of Ahamdinejad’s staunchest supporters is Fatemeh Rajabi, a hard-line female journalist and wife of government spokesman Fatemeh Rajabi. Yet a number of women told RFE/RL that they cast their ballot on June 12 just to say “no” to Ahmadinejad, whom they described as being “antiwoman” and “antifreedom.” Prominent Tehran-based women’s-rights activist Nasrin Sotoudeh tells RFE/RL that she believes women have many good reasons to protest against Ahmadinejad’s reelection. “In the past four years, not only women’s gatherings came under attack,” Sotoudeh says. “[Many women] were repeatedly summoned by the judiciary and put on trial. They faced long jail terms, but they also faced serious problems because of their appearance and they were constantly attacked and beaten up.”
During last week’s demonstrations in Tehran and other cities, women of all ages and segments of society were seen at the forefront of the protests. Some were holding banners; chanting slogans; defying police. Some were seen beating back Basij militia and plainclothes agents who were attacking protestors with sticks.
A video of a young Iranian girl kicking a member of the riot police was making the rounds. In one picture of the recent unrest, a woman in chador is seen running to protect a man who is being beaten by baton-wielding security forces.
Active Roles
Zahra Gholamipour, the leader of Iran’s Pan-Iranist party, tells RFE/RL that women in Iran have always played an active role in society, despite the discrimination they face. “Iranian woman are not the type of women who remain silent and consider themselves lesser than men — even though, unfortunately, after the revolution, [women’s rights] have been violated,” she says. “Today, we see that women are ahead of men in these rightful protests.” Gholamipour, who participated in some of last week’s protests, says that during some rallies women outnumbered men.
Women in Iran face considerable legal discrimination. For example, they don’t have equal rights in divorce and child custody, and they are not allowed to travel outside the country without the permission of their fathers or husbands. But eyewitnesses say that when it came to the crackdown, security forces treated the protesters equally. Women were beaten up — brutally in some cases. And women are among the 23 or so reported so far killed in the postelection unrest. “Iranian women showed again how strong they are,” says Gholamipour. “Many times they were beaten up with electric sticks, but they would come back and [defy] the police. These women are mothers, they are sisters. These women feel responsible.”
No matter what results from the current crisis, both Gholamipour and Sotoudeh believe that women, who make up about 65 percent of Iran’s university students, will keep pushing for more rights. Some have already come up with a new slogan: “Our Neda, Our Voice.”
17 June 2009
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17 June 2009
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17 June 2009
A report on the Reporters Without Borders website reads:
The Iranian authorities are continuing a crackdown on journalists and information that began after the announcement of the disputed presidential election results. Journalists are still being arrested and more censorship measures have been adopted as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejads allies try to suppress media coverage of fraud allegations.
Independent sources of news and information find it very hard to make their voice heard now in Iran because of the censorship, Reporters Without Borders said. The authorities are tightening their grip on all news media and means of communication that could be used to dispute Ahmadinejad reelection victory. They are doing everything possible to limit coverage of the consequences of the election fraud.
Reporters Without Borders reiterates its appeal to the international community not to recognise the results of the presidential election first round held on 12 June.
A democratic election is one in which the media are free to monitor the electoral process and investigate fraud allegations but neither of these two conditions has been met for Mahmoud Ahmadinejads supposed reelection, Reporters Without Borders said. We urge the international community, especially European countries, not to recognise the results announced by the authorities as long as the electoral process is subject to censorship. An election won by means of censorship and arrests of journalists is not democratic.
The security services have moved into the offices of newspapers where they are reading articles and censoring content. Mehdi Karoubi, one of the candidates, referred to the censorship in a press release. I cannot even publish my release in my newspaper Etemad Meli, he said.
The newspapers front page (displayed on http://www.roozna.com/) shows a photo of Ahmadinejad at a rally with columns left blank because of editing by the censors. The newspaper Velayat in the province of Qazvin (north of Tehran) has been suspended for publishing a cartoon of Ahmadinejad.
Even governmental news sources have been targeted in the crackdown. Four interior ministry officials have been arrested for given results that were different from those announced by Ahmadinejads allies.
Four of the leading pro-reform newspapers have been closed or prevented from criticising the official election results following a warning from Tehran prosecutor general Said Mortazavi. Kalameh Sabaz, a daily owned by opposition presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi, was one of these. Its distribution was blocked and it was forced to change a front page announcing Mousavis victory. It has not been able to publish any issue since 13 June.
The authorities have also launched a broad offensive against the Internet, controlling and blocking all news websites likely to challenge Ahmadinejads announced victory. Ten or so pro-opposition websites have been censored.
They include www.entekhab.ir/ (inaccessible since 11 June), www.ayandenews.com/ (inaccessible since 12 June), teribon.com/, the pro-reform sites khordadeno.com/, aftabnews.ir/index.php and ghalamesabz.com/, norooznews.ir (the news website of the pro-Mousavi Islamic Participation Party) and www.ghalamsima.com/ (which also supports the Mousavi campaign). And the womens rights website www.we-change.org/ has been blocked for the 20th time.
The international websites YouTube and Facebook are hard to access. The mobile phone network is being jammed. The service of the leading mobile phone operator, which is state controlled, has been suspended since 10 p.m. on 13 June. The SMS messaging network has been cut since the morning of 12 June, preventing use of Twitter.
The blockage of the foreign media has been stepped up. In addition to the blocking of the BBCs website, the Farsi-language satellite broadcasts of the VOA and BBC which are very popular in Iran have been partially jammed. The BBC reported that their Farsi broadcasts have been the target of significant jamming coming from Iran since 1245 GM on 12 June, and that the jamming has been getting steadily worse.
The authorities yesterday ordered the Tehran bureau of the Arab satellite TV news station Al-Arabiya closed for a week after it broadcast video of the first demonstration following the announcement of Ahmadinejads reelection.
Foreign journalists have been prevented from covering the demonstrations, some have been notified that their visas will not be renewed, and some have been the victims of police violence. A member of a TV crew working for the Italian station RAI and a Reuters reporter were beaten by police in the capital. A BBC TV crew was threatened by police at one point, but demonstrators chased the police away. The correspondents of the German TV stations ARD and ZDF were forbidden to leave their hotel on 13 June.
Two Dutch TV journalists working for Nederland 2 were arrested and expelled. Reporter Yolanda Alvarez of the Spanish television station TVE was deported together with her crew today.
Journalists arrested
Eleven Iranian journalists have been arrested since 12 June. Reza Alijani (winner of the 2001 Reporters Without Borders-Fondation de France press freedom prize), Hoda Sabaer and Taghi Rahmani were arrested on 13 June. Alijani and Rahmani were released yesterday evening. Freelancer Kivan Samimi Behbani, the former editor of Nameh (The Letter), an independent monthly closed in 2005, and Ahamad Zeydabadi were also arrested and then released.
Abdolreza Tajik was arrested at midday yesterday at the headquarters of the newspaper Farhikhtegan by three men in plain-clothes. A member of the Human Rights Defenders Centre, Tajik has worked for many Iranian publications that have been closed by the authorities, including Bahar (closed in 2001), Hambastegi (closed in 2003) and Shargh (closed in 2008).
Five of the journalists arrested in the past few days are still detained. They include Said Shariti, the editor of the news website Nooroz, who is being held by the police, and Mahssa Amrabadi of the daily Etemad Melli. She was arrested at her home yesterday by intelligence ministry agents who came with a warrant for the arrest of her husband, fellow-journalist Masoud Bastani. He was not at home at the time.
Two women journalists working at the Mousavi campaign headquarters were physically attacked on 12 June. The Mousavi campaign news centre was ransacked on 13 June by Ahmadinejad supporters, who destroyed its computers. The Qalam News agency operated out of this centre.
There is no word of about 10 other journalists who have either been arrested or gone into hiding.
16 June 2009
Reporter Without Borders reports that Radio Erena (‘Our Eritrea’), a Tigrinya-language station broadcasting by satellite to Eritrea, has begun operating in Paris.
The result of an initiative by Eritrean journalists based abroad and supported by Reporters Without Borders, the station is offering freely-reported, independent news and information to Eritreans in Eritrea. Independent of any political organisation or government, Radio Erena is offering news, cultural programmes, music and entertainment. A network of contributors based in the United States, Italy, Britain and the Netherlands is providing the Paris-based staff with Tigrinya-language programmes that are broadcast via Arabsat’s Badr-6 satellite. Eritreans can tune into Radio Erena on the 11,785 Mhz frequency with vertical polarisation (SR 27500, FEC 3/4). The station’s programming will soon be broadcast on the Internet as well, so that the Eritrean diaspora will also be able to listen to it.
Eritrea has had no free press since September 2001, when the few Asmara-based independent newspapers were closed down and their publishers and editors were arrested as part of a wave of round-ups ordered by President Issaias Afeworki. Since then, the only news available to Eritreans in their national language has been provided by the state media – Eri-TV, Radio Dimtsi Hafash and the government daily Hadas Eritrea – which are all closely supervised by the information ministry.
