Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Iranian freedom of press in action--paper shut down

Photos source: jaras

In keeping with the Iranian tradition of freedom of the press, the Iranian "Press Supervisory Board", best described as a "censorship bureau", ordered the daily independent paper "Shargh" closed today. The news was announced by Pars news (Only on the Persian version of the site).

The reason for the closure was the publication of the cartoon shown in the photo above. The regime claims that the cartoon represents an insult to the Iranian war veterans. I assume that the timing of publication and the similarity of the blindfolds in the cartoon to the basij bandanas is used as an excuse to attack this hard hitting political cartoon, which has nothing to do with the 1980s war and tons to do with the current social and political environment in Iran. 

In addition to the closure of the paper, the editor was arrested and was send to prison to join dozens of other journalists already there. More on the plight of Iran's jailed journalists you can go to: http://cpj.org/2012/02/attacks-on-the-press-in-2011-iran.php

For those who like to compare Iran to the USA, I would say that cartoons critical of the US president, the US wars, etc. are a google search away. Oops, sorry, google is also blocked by the censors this week in Iran. In any case, the US government has no mechanism to censor the press and does not have the power to shut any publication down.  

Below is another cartoon by the same paper from 2006 which depicted Ahmadinejad as a donkey in a chess board (see below). Needless to say that that cartoon also resulted in a shutdown of this paper.

This is the main portion of the original post on pars news:
با نظر هیئت نظارت بر مطبوعات"
روزنامه شرق توقیف شد
خبرگزاری فارس: روزنامه شرق به دنبال انتشار کاریکاتوری توهینآمیز علیه رزمندگان و بسیجیان دفاع مقدس، از سوی هیئت نظارت بر مطبوعات توقیف شد.

به گزارش خبرنگار جامعه خبرگزاری فارس، به دنبال انتشار کاریکاتوری توهینآمیز در روزنامه شرق(چاپ روز گذشته) هیئت نظارت جلسهای اضطراری تشکیل داد.

در پایان این جلسه اعضای هیئت نظارت بر مطبوعات بر اساس بند 8 ماده 6 و تبصره ماده قانون مطبوعات تصمیم به توقیف انتشار روزنامه شرق گرفتند و پرونده آن را به دادگاه ارسال کردند.

مهدی رحمانیان مدیرمسئول این روزنامه، امروز برای ادای توضیحات درباره انتشار این کاریکاتور به دادسرای عمومی و انقلاب تهران احضار گردید و در نهایت با نظر بازپرس شعبه 9 دادسرای فرهنگ و رسانه، قرار بازداشت برای وی صادر شد."
Older Cartoon:
Photo credit: flicker

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is obvious that during a war or any kind of aggression, dissents benefit an enemy...

Dissident

Anonymous said...

and it's equally obvious that Quislings are of no benefit at all.....

such a shame that you're such a

Dysentery-----An inflammatory disorder of the lower intestinal tract, usually caused by a bacterial, parasitic, or protozoan infection and resulting in pain, fever, and severe diarrhea, often accompanied by the passage of blood and mucus.



Anonymous said...

Anon 9:14 AM

Non Dissident,you seem to have answers for everything this regime does contrary to the Iranian peoples wishes.
What are your suggestions regarding 6000 plus executed during the 1986 Khomeini,Mousavi era?
Don't forget the Iran Iraq war was still raging.

Unknown said...

@"dissident" 9:14.
I think I liked your views better when you were Dariush.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Fazeli 6:58PM

I believe that Dariush have taken time off and will be back next year; after the "war" is over, with some good information (for me)... so we may throw a party together.

Dissident

Anonymous said...

Anon 5:27PM

My suggestion for you is to compare your illusionary 6000 number with the numbers of Iranian victims of the shah combined with the Iranian victims of the West sponsored Iraqi war against Iran.

Dissident

Anonymous said...

"My suggestion for you is to compare your illusionary 6000 number with the numbers of the Iranians victims of the shah combined with the Iranian victims of the West sponsored Iraqi war against Iran.

Douche"


1.Over six thousand were murdered before the end of Iran Iraq war.

2.Khomeini prolonged the war by six years.So he was responsible for the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands.

3.There is not one mass grave found or proved under the Shahs governance.

4.But there are plenty of proven mass graves under Islamic nasty regime.

Your primitive propaganda belongs to the branch of the Hojjatieh Society!



Anonymous said...

Dissident,Daruish or what ever your real name is.You are a typical low ranking Cyber Mozdor with your Sisyphean stories provided by Velayat-e-faqih.
Go back to Qom and entertain your batche mullah friends there.Because you have become boringly predictable.

Anonymous said...

Anon 7:27PM

I am here, so you will not wither from a boredom, because other actors "portraying regime" on this blog, are on vacations or "in training" to upgrade their skills..

The regime doesn't need to use high ranking guys, because there is a low level of adversary skills on this blog and the prevention of the Google has been a sufficient step...

Regarding predictability; in your comment, I would like to predict a possibility for you, that you may see an Iranian manned flight into the space (if you are not a moron, yet), rather than a collapse of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Dissident