84 reporters have been detained, the last for interviewing families of protesters on death row
Iran is in its fourth month of protests as the regime tightens its grip on journalists attempting to cover the mobilizations, and 84 reporters have been detained, according to the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ). Mehdi Beik, head of the political section of the reformist newspaper ‘Etemad’, is the latest to be added to the list of arrested journalists, as confirmed by his own outlet. Beik’s latest works have consisted of interviews with relatives of detainees sentenced to death in the protests, an uncomfortable subject for authorities. The reporter’s wife wrote on Twitter that “Officers from the Ministry of Information took him away and also took his phone and laptop,” the BBC reported. The charges have not yet been made public.
In addition to the persecution faced by local reporters, we need to increase the pressure on those around them. “The families of many detained journalists have been intimidated to remain silent, the threat is that if they publicly denounce the case, the detention of their loved ones will be extended,” denounced CPJ. Reporting is very complicated for local reporters and impossible for international ones due to the fact that press visas have not been issued since September.
In September, protests erupted in Iran following the death of young Mahsa Amini at the hands of Tehran’s moral police. They arrested him for not wearing the veil correctly and he did not leave the police station alive. Since then, mobilizations have followed each other, at least 500 have been killed, according to data from the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), and at least two young people have been hanged following swift trials suing humanitarian organizations for the lack of guarantees. The two executed were charged with ‘moharebeh’, which can be translated as ‘enmity against God’, which carries the death penalty in Iran.
In the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) annual report, published in December, the Islamic Republic ranks third as the country with the most imprisoned journalists, followed by China and Myanmar.
In these four months, complaints of sexual abuse of women detained during the protests have reached the international media. The regime has always denied and defended that it was “information from hostile media”, but this week the Mezan news portal, linked to the Ministry of Justice, reported that “the vice president of the judicial authority for international affairs and secretary of The Supreme Human Rights Council, Kazem Gharibabdi, has called on the country’s attorney general to conduct a thorough investigation into allegations of sexual assault and rape against some detainees.”
Source: La Verdad
I am an experienced and passionate journalist with a strong track record in news website reporting. I specialize in technology coverage, breaking stories on the latest developments and trends from around the world. Working for Today Times Live has given me the opportunity to write thought-provoking pieces that have caught the attention of many readers.
