11 Oct 22 | Iran, News and features
The death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in Iran following her arrest by the “morality police” has sparked widespread protests across the country, with women taking a prominent role in demonstrating against their unequal treatment in the country. The Iranian regime, led by Ayatollah Khamenei, has responded with deadly violence.
Since Amini’s death on 16 September, precipitated by her arrest for not wearing the hijab correctly, at least 185 people, including at least 19 children, have been killed in the nationwide protests across Iran, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI). The deaths of several young women involved in the protests has led to a growing chorus of outrage, both within the country and internationally.
Among the dead is Sarina Esmailzadeh, a 16-year-old girl who was killed following protests on 22 September in Mehrshahr, just outside Tehran, reportedly due to repeated baton blows by security forces. Authorities have aired “so-called” confessions by alleged family members stating that her death was suicide, which have been called into question.
Nika Shakarami (right) has also died, allegedly at the hands of the Iranian security forces, after she was pictured burning her hijab. The 17-year-old disappeared for nine days before her badly beaten body was identified by her family in a morgue.
Women human rights defenders and journalists are being targeted. Femena reports that women’s rights activist Narges Hosseini, one of the “Girls of Revolution Street”, who protested back in 2017 and 2018 about the compulsory hijab, was arrested on 22 September in Kashan in central Iran. Four years ago, she spent three months in prison on charges of “encouraging prostitution” and “non-observance of hijab”.
CHRI has also reported on the arrest of Niloufar Hamedi, a well-known journalist who first revealed the circumstances surrounding Mahsa Amini’s death that same say. Hamedi has been placed in solitary confinement in the notorious Evin prison.
Others who have been detained include journalist and woman human rights defender, Elaheh Mohammadi, Kurdish writer and filmmaker Mozhgan Kavusi and photojournalist Yalda Moayeri, according to Femena.
Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraeei, an Index contributor who was only released from prison in May 2022 after being imprisoned in 2014 on charges of insulting the Supreme Leader and spreading propaganda against the state, has also been rearrested.
The attacks and arrests have so far not managed to silence women, who continue to protest. According to the BBC World Service’s Rana Rahimpour women are walking the streets of Tehran with no hijab and cars are honking their support. School girls have also joined the protests. Social media posts that have gone viral show them going without a hijab and making rude gestures to and removing and covering the images of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei in their classrooms.
On 9 October, teenage girls in the city of Arak, southwest of capital Tehran, marched in protest chanting “death to the dictator”, before they were fired on with rubber bullets and tear gas by riot police.
Protests have also sprung up at universities across the country. Shots were fired indiscriminately by security forces at a protest at Tehran’s Sharif University on 8 October, according to CHRI. Students at the city’s University of Art held a demonstration on 10 October where they congregated to spell out the word “blood”. The same day, female students at the Polytechnic University chanted, “Tell my mother she no longer has a daughter” – a shocking reference to the fate that could befall the students for daring to protest.
Students of Amir Kabir university protest against the hijab. Photo: Darafsh Kaviyani
There are signs that support for the protests is spreading more widely. Oil workers in Iran, including port workers in Asaluyeh and refinery workers in Abadan, are striking in support of the protests. This could be significant as such protests have not been seen since the 1979 revolution.
The city of Sanandaj in Kurdistan has become the frontline of the protests and the regime has cracked down brutally, leading some to call the city a “war zone”. The CHRI reports that at least four people have been killed and more than 100 injured on 9 October. The government has deployed forces from outside the region in the city.
News that has emerged from Iran has made it out despite widespread internet and mobile network shutdowns in the country. NetBlocks has reported that the internet national mobile disruptions were in place once again and the internet had been cut in Sanandaj. Speaking to an Index correspondent over the phone from his home city of Sari in the north of Iran, the censored musician Mehdi Rajabian said: “It has become very difficult for me to access the free internet and the speeds of the platforms are very slow and blocked. I have to connect with a filter breaker and many times the filter breakers don’t work. Our communication is very slow.”
Such restrictions mean that the number of those killed, injured or detained is likely to be much higher.
There are signs that Iranians are increasingly looking to virtual private networks (VPNs) to help them circumvent the country’s internet broad censorship. Research by the VPN tracker Top10VPN.com shows that downloads of VPNs in Iran were 30 times higher at the end of September than in the previous 28 days and that demand for the services remains significantly heightened.
CHRI’s executive director Hadi Ghaemi feels that the situation is likely to worsen as Khamenei’s rule comes under growing pressure.
“The ruthless killings of civilians by security forces in Kurdistan Province, on the heels of the massacre in Baluchestan Province, are likely preludes to severe state violence to come,” said Ghaemi in a statement about the protests.
He said, “World leaders must move beyond statements of condemnation to collective action through an international front signalling to the government in Iran that the international community will not look the other way and conduct business as usual while it slaughters unarmed civilians.”
In response, Khamenei has said foreign states are responsible for driving the women’s protests. With support growing fast, he may soon no longer be able to lay the blame outside Iran’s borders.
01 Jun 22 | Iran, Middle East and North Africa, News and features
People in authoritarian countries often feel as though they are living in a multiverse, with different versions of reality. Iran is a case in point.
On Thursday 26 May, up to 100,000 people including families with children flocked to the Azadi Stadium in Tehran to celebrate the release of a new pop song. This may seem little different from, say, crowds of screaming teenagers going to Wembley Stadium to worship Harry Styles.
Calling Salam Farmandeh “pop” is a bit of a stretch. The song, which translates as Hello Commander in English, is state-backed and tells the story of a young child who is speaking to Imam Mahdi, a messianic figure in Islam who rids the world of evil and injustice. The song also references the country’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei.
The pro-government Tehran Times said the song’s performer Abouzar Rouhi had risen “to national, if not international, prominence for his tuneful song” while recognising that Rouhi “isn’t a singer in the true sense of the word”.
Government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi said the song and concert was “a manifestation of [the children of] the 1390s [the 2010s] pledging allegiance to the Revolution”.
In an alternate reality at the same time, demonstrators also took to the streets of Iran following a collapse of a building on Monday 23 May in Abadan in south-western Iran in which at least 31 people are known to have died and scores more injured. The collapse of the Metropol building has been blamed on developer greed and corruption but the protests have become sharper following indifference to the plight of the families of the dead and injured.
Thousands of security forces have now descended on Abadan and other regional cities and protesters have been met with teargas and even bullets, with the response bordering on martial law in some cases.
There have also been protests in the Tehran suburb of Shahr-e Ray, where protesters chanted “Death to the dictator” in reference to Ali Khamenei.
“Public expressions of dissent are not tolerated in Iran,” said Hannah Somerville, editor of IranWire English, “and even less so in the border areas, which the mullahs regard as posing a heightened ‘security’ risk due to the diverse demographic makeup and higher rates of deprivation.”
She said: “The Supreme Leader’s first statement acknowledging the incident came three days too late. When it did arrive, it was desultory at best. That was ultimately what sparked the protests late last week, together with state media outlets deliberately minimising the disaster – for instance, by making reference only to ‘superficial injuries’ and not the number of dead. The head of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting openly told a group of students at Sharif University of Technology on Monday that he had been asked to limit coverage to an hour or two at most.”
By contrast the coverage of the alternate reality – the Hello Commander concert – was extensive.
“The timing of this propaganda-fest could not have been worse, and will doubtless have further incensed any devastated families in Abadan who saw it on their TV screens,” said Somerville.
Following the protests, the internet has been disrupted in several major cities in the Khuzestan region including Abadan: a tactic to restrict the free flow of information that the Iranian state always deploys during times of popular unrest.
Mahsa Alimardani, senior researcher for MENA at Article 19, says the internet has been disconnected from 5pm to early morning on most days since protests started.
The authorities are always quick to cover up the reasons for the internet shutdowns.
“The Telecommunications Infrastructure Company announced on 26 May there would be nationwide disruptions related to infrastructure changes and updates,” said Alimardani.
The shutdowns have affected coverage of the protests in the country where WhatsApp and Instagram are both hugely popular.
The government has previously restricted coverage of protests on Instagram, said Alimardani.
“We had issues with protest content removals in July 2021, when we documented over 200 cases of protest footage being removed from Instagram,” she said. “Discussions with Instagram back then led to a temporary exception during the protests to allow for the chant that was being labelled as ‘violent incitement’ by their policies to stay on. The chant is a tradition of all Iran’s protests – “death to the dictator; death to Khamenei; death to the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps]”.
IranWire’s Somerville says the cover-up of the situation in Abadan is a symptom of the government’s obsession with the ‘problem’ of the country’s youth.
“The situation is even more charged because we already know several of the tens of victims of the Metropol collapse were young people, “the youth” being a fixation for both Ali Khamenei and in Islamic Republic revolutionary doctrine, hence the Hello Commander event. This is not a story the regime wants told. The protest suppression and media muzzling are part and parcel of the same effort to make sure the story stays buried along with those young people from Abadan,” she said.
The Iranian government’s efforts to hide the news from Abadan and show their own version of the world were further stymied when Iranian actor Zahra Amir Ebrahimi referenced the situation when accepting the award for best actress at the recent Cannes Film Festival.
Ebrahimi won the award for her portrayal of an investigative journalist in the Persian-language crime thriller Holy Spider, which is based on the true story of Saeed Hanaei, a serial killer who targeted sex workers in the city of Mashad in 2000 and 2001. At the time, Hanaei became a folk hero for the ultra-religious conservatives for “cleansing” the city of prostitution.
Ebrahimi said in her speech, “Although I am very happy at moment, part of my being is sad for the Iranian people who are facing many problems every day. My heart is with the people of Abadan.”
Her comments won’t go down well the Iranian government and its attempts to create an alternate reality where all is well with the world.
22 Aug 19 | Media Freedom, News and features, Pakistan
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”108681″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]Since its liberalisation in 2002, the media landscape of Pakistan has been one of the most vibrant and varied in South Asia. Pakistan is home to both long-running traditional newspapers like Dawn and many homegrown television and social media news coverage channels.
However, in the run-up to the 2018 elections, interference and censorship by the military establishment dramatically increased. Journalists have faced harassment and interference, pressure on media owners is common, and the government has taken to jamming the signals and interrupting the distribution of news it dislikes. At the same time, the media faces a growing lack of trust from the Pakistani public, and economic pressures have contributed to what some observers are calling an internal “crisis.”
Index on Censorship’s Sophia Paley spoke with a Pakistani journalist based in Lahore, who agreed to give his own impressions of censorship in Pakistan. He insisted on anonymity, explaining that he feared reprisals from the military. Below is their interview, edited for brevity and clarity:
Index on Censorship: During the run up to the 2018 presidential elections, the government of Pakistan intimidated the media into employing an unprecedented level of self-censorship. How does this new form of censorship differ from the old, more traditional form, and which do you think is worse for Pakistan?
Journalist: The censorship was enforced by the Pakistani military. Some military officers ran Whatsapp groups and social media campaigns urging people not to vote for Nawaz Sharif’s PMLN and Bilawal Bhutto’s PPP as well. At the same time, Pakistan’s superior judiciary, led by the then Chief Justice Saqib Nisar, clamped down on media coverage during the trial of Nawaz Sharif. I believe that judges in Pakistan are often blackmailed by the military, and the military is used to getting favourable decisions.
Prior to the election, Ahmed Noorani and Matiullah Jan were attacked, and several other (critical) journalists were threatened with death by ISI. News stories questioning the military and judiciary from dozens of journalists were pulled. The current censorship is done in the name of Prime Minister Imran Khan, but it is widely believed that he is only a spokesman for the military.
Index: CPJ and RSF have reported that the number of attacks on journalists is decreasing, but the prevalence of harassment and censorship is nonetheless increasing. Why have we seen a shift away from lethal to nonlethal attacks, and what does it mean?
J: This is true. Physical attacks have dropped because physical elimination is dangerous and causes blame to be directly assigned to the military. The censorship is now forced through media owners. The Pakistani military has perfected this art. They directly call media owners and tell them to stop their employees from tweeting anything critical of the army. If tweets and posts are not deleted, the military will force TV channels off of cable within minutes. Geo News, Abb Tak, Channel 24 have all faced shutdowns across Pakistan in recent months after their aired critical shows or gave coverage to Maryam Nawaz and Asif Ali Zardari. There is a rule in the news rooms that you cannot criticise the military, Imran Khan, or the IMF, and you should fully support the economic policies of the government for a “new Pakistan”.
Several journalists have lost their jobs, and several others’ jobs are in danger. Talat Hussain had to leave his job at Geo because he was critical of the military. Murtaza Solani, Nadeem Nusrat, and Shahzeb Jilani all lost their jobs. Cyril Ameida cannot write his column in Dawn, and he was even charged with treason. Babar Sattar, Ammar Masood and several other leading columnists cannot write anything that goes against the approved narrative.
Any TV channel that doesn’t oblige gets its revenue pulled by the advertising agencies. The calls are made directly by the military. The government gives the most revenue to the channels it favours, so there is an economic squeeze around the media by the government and military combined.
Index: Dawn (one of the most respected and popular Pakistani newspapers) recently published an article asserting that the future of Pakistani media must be digital. However, as Dawn acknowledges, there are obstacles involved in shifting from something like TV to digital print media considering Pakistan’s relatively lower internet penetration and literacy rates. Do you believe that digital media is a viable solution to the current economic crisis in the Pakistani media?
J: The future is digital, but in Pakistan that will take a long time to happen due to poverty and illiteracy. Millions in rural areas have never had access to the internet and their only source of information is state-owned media and the propaganda it churns out. Whatsapp has helped to some extent, but again, due to poor internet connection and other issues, it will take decades. In urban areas, there has been progress to some extent. Several journalists, hounded out of jobs by the military, have set up their own Youtube accounts. They are using Twitter and Facebook to air their views. That’s the only medium they are left with because outlets owned by regular media owners are not allowed to accommodate their views.
Recently, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) mused about potentially banning social media sites carrying “blasphemous content”. The actual objective is to have social media sites on the Chinese and Arab model, where criticism will not be entertained and only the state narrative will be propagated.
Index: There is a lack of trust or goodwill between rival Pakistanti journalists, opposing TV networks, and even factions within media workers’ unions. Do you consider this a problem? What effect, if any, does this have on those journalists, and the Pakistani media industry more broadly?
J: This is a huge problem. Some TV anchors churn out whatever is told to them by the military and its media managers. TV stations attack other media houses, accusing them of treason, being anti-Islam and being foreign agents. Pakistan’s ARY TV called rival channel Geo an agent of India, the CIA and Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency), and ran a campaign against Geo for over a year in 2014. Geo sued ARY TV in London and won the defamation case, which cost ARY about £3 million. Subsequently, Ofcom forced ARY to shut down in the UK.
These days, at least three channels are dedicated to attacking everyone from the media and opposition who doesn’t agree with Imran Khan’s policies. Declarations of treachery, treason and blasphemy are used as a political tool by these channels on behalf of Imran Khan’s government and the military. Those with dissenting opinions are called agents of anti-Pakistani sentiment, anti-Islam forces generally, India, America, Israel, you name it. Only a few anchors are considered neutral; most of the rest are aligned with the ruling PTI. The media industry is completely divided and the middle space has shrunk. There are several media unions and they are not on the same page. It’s a gloomy scenario.
Index: One thing that seems to have united these factions is their opposition to the consolidation and expansion of government regulation of the media under a proposed Pakistan Media Regulatory Authority (PMRA). Do you see the government attempting to push through the opposition and revive this plan, or attempt something similar to it in the future? If so, how might they do so?
J: The media houses and unions and journalists are divided on this. Anchors and journalists linked with the military support more regulation and setting up courts, whose aim is to create a wedge between journalists and owners, and further tighten control of media houses through selecting judges who will do the bidding of the military. This plan of regulating the media is the brainchild of the military, which is obsessed with the concept of “fifth generation warfare” and believes every aspect of the narrative should be controlled through every means possible. (The PMRA) is happening, and the military will get it enforced come what may, as it needs a civilian façade for its martial law scheme. [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Additional reporting by Zofeen Ebrahim.[/vc_column_text][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1566474313248-04d0aaec-685c-8″ taxonomies=”8996″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
09 Apr 14 | News and features, Pakistan, Politics and Society
(Image: Aleksandar Mijatovic/Shutterstock)
In the sixth attack on Express Media employees unknown assailants threw a hand grenade at the gate of Express News bureau chief’s house in Peshawar’s Murshidabad area. Though no one was injured in Sunday’s incident, it highlights the dangers for Pakistan’s journalists.
“It was 6:30 am. I woke up to a loud screeching made by a motorbike, followed seconds later by a thunderous sound. I ran out and saw a cloud of smoke,” said 38-year old Jamshed Baghwan, speaking to Index over phone from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s provincial capital, Peshawar.
The main gate and the walls of neighbouring houses, said the journalist, were pocked with holes made by ball bearings packed in bomb.
This was the second attack on Baghwan. On March 19, he had found a 2 kg bomb “at exactly the same place” which was diffused in time by the bomb disposal unit.
“I have no idea why anyone would attack me,” he said. “I’ve covered the army operation in Swat when the security forces cleansed the place of militants; I’ve covered conflicts in Bajaur and South Waziristan, but there never was a threat from any quarter, so why now?” he is perplexed.
This is the sixth attack on Express Media organisation in the last nine months. Four of Express’s employees have been killed.
On March 28, a senior Pakistani analyst, Raza Rumi, working for Express News, came under a volley of gunshots after his car was intercepted by gunmen on motorbikes, while passing a busy market place in Lahore. He has been vocal in his condemnation of the Taliban and religious extremist groups. While Rumi narrowly escaped, his driver died and his guard remains critically injured.
An editorial, by Express Tribune, a sister organisation, had frustration and helplessness written all over when it read: “Shall we just close shop, keeping in mind that we are no longer safe telling the truth and the state clearly cannot, or may not want to, provide us protection or even justice?”
The same day as the attack on Baghwan, in the eastern city of Lahore, in the Punjab province, a rally was held by journalists and civil society to protest the death threats on Imtiaz Alam, secretary general of South Asia Free Media Association.
Political leaders and the government routinely condemn attacks on media workers, but have yet to take concrete action. In the meantime, journalists continue to die. Declan Walsh of the New York Times tweeted: “When militants take on journalists, this is how it goes – one by one, they pick them off. Outrage is not enough.”
With no let up in the attacks, journalists are saying they need to watch their own as well as their colleagues’ backs.
But is it possible when journalists have yet to come together?
Kamal Siddiqi, editor the Express Tribune lamented: “…there is no unity amongst the journalist community. We have a great tradition of abiding by democratic traditions but at the same time we have done poorly in terms of sticking together. There are splinters within splinters,” he wrote in his paper.
However, media analyst Adnan Rehmat, finds solidarity and sympathy for those who have been attacked or are under threat among the journalists. “It’s the media owners who are not forthcoming. The pattern and nature of attacks is consistent; but not the response from media owners,” he says.
He recently published a book titled Reporting Under Threat. It is an “intimate look into the harsh every-day life of journalists working in hostile conditions” through testimonies from 57 Pakistani journalists, including editors, reporters, camerapersons, sub-editors, news directors, photographers, correspondents and stringers working for TV channels, newspapers, radio stations and magazines.
“They don’t consider the attack on one individual an attack on all,” he points out. “While Rumi’s attack elicited a strong reaction from civil society, there was little condemnation from media houses. On the other hand, because Alam does not work for any competing newspaper or channel, it was easier to support him and this was across the board.” Part of the problem, said Rehmat was the media owners were not journalists and therefore did not equate themselves with journalists.
Rehmat believes, it is time, the media owners gathered on platforms like the All Pakistan Newspapers Society, Pakistan Broadcaster’s Association (representing private TV channels) and the Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors and come up with a “singular response” in the form of policies that reflect that “safety of journalists is their number one priority”.
“I think the media owners are playing into the hands of the militants,” pointed out Shamsul Islam Naz, former secretary general of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists. “If this is a dangerous business, why hasn’t a single media owner been killed yet?” He said he had been observing the way private news channels had been covering militancy and giving unsolicited air time to banned militant outfits infraction of Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority.
Ironically, these attacks follow a high level meeting of Committee to Protect Journalists delegation with prime minister Nawaz Sharif in which the latter had pledged to address the threats to country’s journalists. Among the several commitments, was putting protection of journalists on the agenda in the ongoing peace talks with the Taliban.
According to CPJ, since 1992, 54 journalists have been killed with their motives confirmed, meaning CPJ is reasonably certain that the journalist was killed in line of duty.
While militants openly admit to the attacks, this is not the only threat to journalists. There are state elements including its intelligence agencies, members of elected political parties, even those from the business community, who may go from simply roughing up, torturing, detaining, to even killing if the dissenting voices get relentless and refuse to keep quiet.
This article was posted on 9 April 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
