Only 'good' news
Banned reporter describes Iran as a ‘prison for journalists, intellectuals and feminists’
By Kevin Uhrich 03/18/2010
Few other places in the world are worse for journalism — both in gathering information and staying alive or out of jail long enough to report it — than Iran, where two reformist publications were recently shuttered by the country’s repressive Islamic government. As reported by the Iranian Labour News Agency, Etemad, the largest circulation reformist daily paper in the country, and the weekly magazine Irandokht — both connected to Iranian opposition leader Mehdi Karrubi — were closed by the Press Supervisory Board for allegedly “revealing or publishing secret documents and orders” without a permit, a breach of Law No. 6.
While that was happening, however, the government sent mixed and perhaps intentionally misleading messages by releasing on bail four jailed journalists — all held in prison since late December, when they were arrested on the Muslim holy day Ashura during one of the most fervent protests since the June re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to Labour News.
Few are more painfully aware of the connection between these apparently contradictory events than exiled journalist Mehrdad Balali. The ongoing travails in a country that Balali calls a “prison for journalists, intellectuals and feminists” only further illustrate a nation in crisis, one in which the press has been caught in a volatile power struggle between so-called pragmatists protesting for social reform and fascistic religious extremists who exert great influence over Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nation’s supreme leader.
An Iranian-born American, the 54-year-old Balali, who once lived in Pasadena and Monrovia as a teen and today resides in Monterey, returned to Iran in 1991. There he wrote for Agence France-Presse (AFP), the Economist and Reuters before being banned in 2000 from writing for foreign news organizations. Balali, who also worked as a commentator for CNN, BBC and NPR, covered the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Houri”, Balali’s first novel, is a fictional autobiography reimagining his early teenage years as living in Iran with his hard-living, skirt-chasing father, who came to symbolize for him all the wicked excesses that led to the Islamic Revolution in the late 1970s.
“As a social studies lesson alone, ‘Houri’ could not be more timely, as the Western world, America in particular, tries to understand Iran as a nation of complex political history, cultural traditions and religious diversity,” states a review written by The Independent and appearing on Amazon.com.
Pasadena Weekly: Just how restricted is the mainstream press in Iran? How much government influence is there at newspapers and TV and radio stations?
MeHRdad Balali: Right now it’s almost total. It’s absolutely repressive. When I was working there, it was a lot more open, and when I say a lot more open, it is nothing like what you have here. … Things were relatively open, but after the election nine months ago, the presidential election, the two sides — the pro-democracy opposition and the regime — clashed, so things have been getting more repressive. At this time Iran is the biggest prison for journalists in the world. … First of all, there are very few independent newspapers in Iran. Very few. Television is controlled by the government. The major newspapers are controlled by the supreme leader. About 80 percent of newspapers are run by government organizations. … There are a few newspapers that are run by the opposition, but when I say opposition, they are still within the Islamic system, only they are critical of the status quo. They get warnings and notices, but if they repeat three or four times, they close the newspaper and they have to go to court. This is something we take for granted here. Very simple things would be very serious for journalists in Iran.
What are Westerners to make of these two seemingly disparate events?
First of all, these [prisoner] releases are temporary and they come on the eve of Iranian New Year (Norooz). So they are doing it just to show that they are compassionate, even to criminals, as they say (chuckles). They say, “Oh, they are such good people, and we want to help them to spend a few days of the New Year with their families.” But then they are all going to go back to jail.
And when they say they are being released, these are hefty bails. And they have no way of escaping the bail. That’s one thing.
The second thing is there is a big power struggle brewing within the regime. We have these really hard-line fascists, Islamic fascists, on the one hand. These are really chauvinistic people who want domination of the world. … On the other hand, we have the pragmatic figures, and the leader of these pragmatic figures is former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Rafsanjani is old guard, but has always been the voice of moderation. He has tempered the voice of extremism within the regime. … He’s also a close friend of the supreme leader. … They don’t seem to be as politically close as they used to be, but he still has some influence, so he is pulling him on the side of moderation. But the hardliners, they are trying to force the supreme leader to crack down completely … to put everybody in jail, just to stifle dissent once and for all. That’s what they believe. Any other country besides Iran, they would have had a total change of leadership, but not in Iran. … If this was any other country, the whole regime would have collapsed. But this regime has used force, and they also have money from the oil revenue, so they have enough weapons and at the same time they have enough money to feed the people they can always mobilize and bring out into the street in a show of full support for the regime. They do have that.
Are there any alternative or underground publications operating in Iran? What would the punishment be like if those publishers were discovered?
It’s very difficult to have a newspaper which is alternative or independent. … If you open anything like that, the next day secret agents are going to come to your office and they are going to seal the front door, and they are going to haul you off to prison — a secret jail. Nobody knows where you are for almost a month until they turn you over to the judiciary, and then you are going to be held until a trial is held for you, and the trial is going to be secret, and no one is going to know what is going to happen.
Defendants don’t even have a chance to meet with an attorney, if they have any. And they are not allowed to talk to their relatives. So, no, there would be nothing like that. A new generation turned to the Internet to express their views, but right now they are trying to stifle that too. What they are doing is they are watching the Internet. They started this new law on controlling or regulating journalist activity through the Internet.
We learned about the post-election protests mostly through Twitter and MySpace. What role do you see emerging technologies like those and Facebook playing in promoting free speech in Iran?
It’s fabulous. As you know, when there was the uprising after the election, they cracked down on the press and would not allow any journalist to go and cover it, and what they did was they sent out the news and images, the bloody scenes and everything, and they used their cell phones to take pictures. But the government found a way to solve that too. In the last demonstration, they disrupted Internet connections altogether and they disrupted cell phones. Even if they were able to take a picture, they were not able to post it. Everything remained disrupted for a few days, until the news was diluted and there was no more interest in that. But the good thing is that, as you know, there was a ban on the sale of Internet equipment from the United States and Europe, part of the sanctions against Iran. But now the treasury secretary has eased that and has allowed technical equipment and parts to be exported to Iran and other countries. That is meant to help Iranians to have access to technology, to be able to follow independent free information and also to communicate with the outside world. So that is good news.
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