Is Iran trying to silence this man? According to Persian journalists, the Iranian
regime’s harassment of exiled journalists and their families has escalated in recent
weeks. This is Niusha Boghrati. He’s the Editor-in-Chief
of Radio Farda, the Persian operation of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty headquartered in
Prague. He describes the measures Iranian authorities
have taken to intimidate him and discredit his name.
Intelligence officers have been operating different accounts and different websites
in order to defame journalists. Creating false news about them that they see as degrading
… For instance about myself, there have been some posts on their websites regarding
a sex change operation, allegedly that I went through. They’re posting news about me moving
to a new apartment at the end of the month.. But the only reason of them doing this is
to notify us – we are the targets. They want to notify us that we’re watching you,
we know what you’re doing.” Iran’s nationwide protests first erupted
in November of this year, after authorities rolled out a sudden petrol-rationing scheme
and slashed subsidies. This sent fuel prices soaring by up to 300%
overnight. The state responded to the unrest with violence
and nationwide Internet blackouts. According to Amnesty International, over 200
people were killed in the crackdown, though the real death toll is believed to be higher.
Meanwhile, Iranian authorities have offered no official casualty list or statement on
the number of deaths. Now people on the streets are not just shouting
for another reformist to take control of the government, what they are shouting is the
collapse of the regime. What they are shouting is down with the Supreme Leader.
With the Internet shut down and domestic media being tightly censored or even told not to
report on the protests, Persian media broadcasters abroad were among the only alternative sources
of information for Iranian citizens. When Iranian establishment shut down the internet,
obviously that limited our access to the pictures coming from inside Iran. But we then re-established
our telephone lines where people could call us and share with us what they had seen.
The reporting by outlets like Iran International, Radio Farda, BBC Persian, and a handful of
other outlets appears to have angered the Iranian regime.
Families of journalists involved say they were harassed as a form of revenge.
We’re aware of at least eleven colleagues who have been affected over the last two weeks.
And normally what they do - they summon their parents and siblings to Iranian Intelligence
Ministry headquarters and they force them to contact their loved ones working for Iran
International or other Persian language broadcasters and tell them to resign immediately and to
stop working for these organizations. and then they say if they don’t resign we will
bring them back to Iran as we have done with other people in recent months
Any kind of suppression of free flow of information is of course immoral, but this is in particular
immoral because the people who are implicated in this campaign have got nothing to do with
the job that the journalists are doing outside Iran.
Alongside the estimated 7000 people arrested during the protests, multiple local journalists
and photojournalists are also confirmed to have been arrested. And in another turn of
events, Iran’s judiciary recently announced the confiscation of all assets belonging to
journalists associated with Iran International. Authorities say they consider the journalists
as “terrorists.” [Iran International] focused on inciting and
intensifying the crises in different parts of the country since the first hours of the
recent events …Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence considers actions by the broadcaster and its
staff as cooperation with Iran’s enemies in terrorist acts“
I was before head of BBC Persia for quite a few years and when I was there I was involved
with these things every day; the freezing of assets, harassing of families, character
assassination, writing false stories. So this is not new.
Given the fact that during the past weeks the Islamic Republic has been facing one of
its greatest crises of its existence during the past four decades, of course it intensified
the pressure that it’s applying against journalists outside the country.
Despite the risks, reporters like Saba and Boghrati intend to continue their work.
They are taking these desperate measure of course it may affect some colleagues, but
at the end of the day we’re not going to change our editorial policy, we’re still
going to broadcast to Iran, we will do our best to absorb these pressures and not let
it affect the way we work This is what we do: we’re journalists and
journalism is not a crime.