28 Sep 10 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
Iranian authorities have revoked the filming permit of an internationally acclaimed director over his support for dissident filmmakers. Asghar Ferhadi, who won the award for best director at the Berlin festival in 2009, called for change at a recent Iranian awards ceremony. He spoke out in favour of actress Golshifteh Farahani, and directors Jafar Panahi, who spent three months in jail, and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who supports the opposition Green Movement. Deputy Culture Minister Javad Shamaqdari described Ferhadi’s comments as “inappropriate”. He said that the director was given a week to change his remarks.
26 May 10 | Index Index, minipost
Film director Jafar Panahi has been released from Tehran’s Evin prison on a bail of $200,000 (£140,000) after more than two months in custody. Although it has been rumoured he was imprisoned for shooting a film about last June’s disputed presidential elections, it seems more likely his arrest was due to his support for opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi. Panahi, who was supposed to sit on the jury of the 2010 Cannes Festival, went on a hunger strike last week to protest the circumstances of his detention. Cannes jury head, US director Tim Burton, joined with Iranian independent filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami and other international filmmakers’ calls for Panahi’s release.
21 May 10 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
Film-maker Jafar Panahi has been imprisoned in Iran since 1 March after the government accused him of making a documentary about last year’s presidential election. He was to be on the Palme d’Or judging panel at the Cannes film festival this week where fellow Iranian film-maker, Abbas Kiarostami, called his arrest an “attack on art” and launched an appeal for his release on 18 May. Panahi has reportedly begun a hunger strike until he is allowed to meet with a lawyer, see his family and be released.
03 Mar 10 | Uncategorized
The Iranian authorities have banned a daily newspaper and a weekly magazine as a crackdown on reformist media escalated in the Islamic republic.
Iran’s press watchdog revoked the licences of Etemad and Irandokht on the same day that security forces arrested the 49-year-old film-maker Jafar Panahi, who is a vocal supporter of the opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.
The newspaper Etemad was banned for the first time in its eight-year history after publishing remarks made by the former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, which suggested that the country is facing a “crisis”, the Iranian Labor News Agency reported.
Mohammed Ali Ramin, Iran’s deputy culture minister for media affairs, suggested that the ban was a “bitter decision” for the government to take.
“After repeated warnings and the persistence of the paper in breaching the regulations, the watchdog had no choice but to ban it,” Ramin said.
Specifically, the board said that the newspaper had violated press law number six, forbidding media organisations from revealing secret orders or publishing discussions of parliament’s closed sessions and trials.
The Press Supervisory Board also prohibited the publication of Irandokht; a magazine run by the family of the opposition leader Mehdi Karrubi that started out as a women’s weekly, but has since altered its focus to cultural and political issues.
No official reason has been given for this decision, but the Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad told CNN that the magazine was closed after Karrubi’s wife Fatameh sent a letter to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini accusing him of abusing her son Ali.
The reporter for Etemad-e Melli said: “Now we are journalists without newspapers, and we really need help for what is happening in Iran to be heard.”
The press supervision body has been busy since the disputed re-election of president Ahmadinejad in June, with the leading business daily Sarmayeh banned in November and the popular publication Etemad-e Melli closed in August.
Highlighting the perilous situation facing many Iranian reporters, Ghanbar Naderi, a journalist for the Iran Daily, told Al Jazeera that continuing closures in the media have created a culture of self-censorship.
He said: “In these sensitive times, with the country under constant political pressure, as a journalist your first mistake will be your last.”
In a further move reflecting the continuing crackdown on dissenters, Jafar Panahi, one of Iranian cinema’s most prominent directors, is
being held at an undisclosed location after he was arrested with his wife, daughter and 15 guests at his home on Monday evening.
These arrests come just days after Iranian authorities released six journalists from Tehran’s Evin prison, including Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, spokesman for the Iranian Committee for the Defence of Freedom of the Press.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists disclosed last month that Iran is now “far and away the world’s leading jailer of journalists”. This news follows the launch of a new campaign by a number of leading press freedom and free expression groups, including Index on Censorship entitled Our Society Will be a Free Society, which aims to release the journalists and writers imprisoned by Iranian authorities.
