Iranian Media Under Pressure To Play Down Ongoing Protests
Although print media in Iran are under strict control and rarely publish news about the protests, security forces have arrested more than three dozen journalists.
Although print media in Iran are under strict control and rarely publish news about the protests, security forces have arrested more than three dozen journalists.
There is a limited degree of discussion in websites and newspapers about how to deal with the protest movement by pundits who are allowed to speak with the media, but these discussions are also limited to opinions that do not cross the regime’s red lines.
The most important red line they do not cross is stating that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei controls all major security decisions and actions in Iran. And this is no surprise. If a media outlet calls the Supreme Leader out on any issue, its managers and reporters will be arrested. So, when the reformist Arman-e Melli daily suggests that "It is time to listen rather than to dictate," it needs to address that to Khamenei, but the media are so intimidated by his power that they do not even implicitly refer to him in such a context.
Prominent Iranian photojournalist Hassan Sarbakhshaian, in a series of tweets on 12 October, listed the names of 38 Iranian journalists who have been arrested by security forces between September 16 and October 10. Sarbakhshaian said the list is verified by the Committee for Protection of Journalists.
Since Sarbakhshian's tweet, a few of those arrested have been released and a few more journalists have been detained, so the figure must have remained around 40. This number is alarming enough for other journalists and media managers to thread carefully. In the meantime, some centrist papers whose reporters are already in jail have even changed their slant in favor of regime’s rhetoric at the expense of annoying their readers.
According to Arman-e Melli, some reformist parties have written to President Ebrahim Raisi demanding permission to hold peaceful demonstrations, but Raisi has not responded, and no party, reformist or otherwise, is brave enough to write to the Supreme Leader. He is unreachable, untouchable and unaccountable.
Many observers in Iran have noted that political parties, as shock absorbers that could protect the government from serious street challenges, are non-existent in Iran. At another level, the president could have acted as a safety net between protesters and the Supreme Leader. But Khamenei has made the role of the President irrelevant. As a result, few protesters even mention Raisi’s name and direct all strongly worded and often derogatory slogans at Khamenei.
Not only the 83-year-old ruler has not done anything to make it possible for top officials to engage with and try to pacify the demonstrators, but he has prevented such dialogues. Judiciary Chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei last week called for dialogue with protesters, but in less than a day, Khamenei forced him to change his word and resume the usual non-compromising and threatening rhetoric.
Even on Thursday, some politicians such as Mohammad Ali Namazi renewed the call for national reconciliation, but Khamenei and the hardliner media supporting him shunned the idea.
Arman-e Melli quoted sociologist Taqi Azad Armaki as saying that "the new generation of Iranians are calling on the regime to pay attention to them. Otherwise, they are not 'revolutionaries' as foreign-based media call them. What Armaki ignored is that many media outlets in Iran would have also called them 'revolutionaries' if they were ever allowed to describe the country's situation as it is.
List of detained journalists as of October 12 -
In an exclusive report on Thursday, our correspondent also cited several witnesses as saying that the number of prisoners killed in this incident was way more than eight people officials claimed.
One of the witnesses, identified as Mosayyeb Raisi Yeganeh -- a political prisoner who was imprisoned in Ward 8 of Evin prison on charges of insulting the Supreme Leader and propaganda against the regime – said he saw with his own eyes that in one case, 10 to 15 young prisoners of Ward 7 under the age of 25 were gunned down during the night.
According to him, the authorities had plotted to use the fire as a pretext to pretend that prisoners were trying to escape and kill whoever they wanted during the mayhem, adding that several of the prisoners who were reported to be hospitalized in the jail’s infirmary are not there at all.
He also claimed that Hassan Mirkazemi -- one of the regime’s insiders and one of those who led the crackdown on people during 2009 protests, and was serving a term for economic corruption – was transferred from the prison before the chaotic night.
Following the blaze, some journalists and people on social media accused the Islamic Republic of setting the prison on fire intentionally, citing an early and extended furlough to Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani, son of former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, as evidence to support their claim. The prison authorities had furloughed several other important and well-connected prisoners in the days leading to the fire. The son of senior conservative lawmaker Mostafa Mir-Salim – imprisoned over connections with exiled Albania-based opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) organization -- was also let out before the incident.
Two other witnesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said the government planned the fire and the fake escape plan of prisoners to suppress the protests that have been growing in solidarity with the nationwide protests, that convulsed Iran since mid-September when 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in custody of hijab police.
Six sources told Reuters on Thursday that two days before the fire ripped through a section of the notorious prison, a riot police unit arrived at the compound and began to patrol the corridors, shouting "God is Greatest" and banging batons on cell doors.
The patrols at the jail began without any apparent provocation by inmates, the sources said. These patrols continued from Thursday to Saturday when some prisoners reacted by shouting for the downfall of the Supreme Leader. "Then we heard shots and chants of 'Death to Khamenei' by prisoners in other wards," said an inmate inside Ward 8.
According to unconfirmed reports, three busloads of political prisoners were also taken to a prison near Tehran, known to be a slaughterhouse for prisoners.
Tasnim news agency affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard quoted a judicial official after midnight on October 15 that a riot had started in the wards where common criminals were kept and sections holding political prisoners were separate.
The prison has been the main site for holding prominent Iranian political prisoners as well as foreigners and dual nationals. It also holds inmates convicted of ordinary crimes and is now receiving a stream of dissidents arrested in the continuing wave of unrest sweeping the country. The prison is known as "Evin University" because of the many antigovernment intellectuals and academics held there.