LEADING JOURNALISTS AND SCHOLARS BANNED ON TALKING TO FOREIGN MEDIA
TEHRAN, 7 June (IPS) Iranian authorities, in the framework of a campaign aimed at preventing demonstrations on 9 July, the fourth anniversary of the student’s anti-regime revolt, renewed the ban on leading journalists and scholars to talk to some foreign-based radio and television stations.
Independent journalists Emaddedin Baqi and Mohsen Sazegara have been summoned by the Intelligence Ministry on Saturday and were told that they should stop talking and giving interviews to radio and television stations that aim at destabilising the Islamic Republic of Iran.
With almost one month to the date on which the authorities savagely crushed a nation-wide protest movement by students four years ago, the 9 July, and preparation by the students and the opposition to commemorate the tragedy, is obviously a topic of talks and interviews by foreign-based media with Iranian journalists and dissidents inside the country, analysts pointed out.
To prevent any mass demonstrations, the authorities have set up a special committee and have warned student’s leaders against any mass protest movement.
"My husband was told by the Intelligence Ministry that he should not talk to foreign radio and televisions sanctioned by the Supreme Council for National Security (SCNS) or he would return to prison", Mrs Fatemeh Kamali Ahmad Sarabi, Mr. Baqi’s wife, told the independent Students News Agency ISNA.
In a decree issued last year, the SCNS banned "prominent and influential" journalists and scholars to talk with the Persian services of Radio Israel, the Voice of America and Radio Azadi (Freedom, renamed Farda, or Tomorrow, which is part of the Prague-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) as well as Iranian media that are "active against the Islamic Republic of Iran".
However, the ban does not include Persian services of the BBC, Radio France International or Radio Moscow, among the tens of nations that have services in Persian.
In an interview with Radio Farda, Mr. Sazegara, a journalist and political activist who has formed the Committee of Iranians for Freedom (CIF) with some fellow dissidents like Mr. Qasem Sho’leh Sa’di, a former lawmaker and university professor, confirmed that he had been stopped boarding a flight to London on Saturday.
He said he was summoned to the Intelligence Ministry last to be told he could no longer talk with Farsi media based abroad.
"I took act, but told them that the ban do not concern me, since I’m an independent journalist and talking to the media or writing is my profession. Then I asked them if there was any problem for me to travel abroad, they said as far as the Ministry is concerned, there is no interdiction", Mr. Sazegara told Radio Farda, adding: "But when I went to the airport the day after for a trip to London, my passport was confiscated by the passport control officer told me to get it back from the central office in Tehran.
Mr. Sazegara had been arrested briefly in mid-February for an article describing the hard line clerical establishment as dictatorial and enumerated the steps to be taken to a nation-wide referendum on the future regime for Iran based on secularism.
Mr. Sholeh Sa’di, a prominent political activist and the spokesman for the CIF was arrested at the Tehran international airport on his return from Paris two months ago and kept behind the bars for 40 days. ENDS JOURNALISTS PREVENTED 7603