{"id":47374,"date":"2013-06-07T11:31:36","date_gmt":"2013-06-07T10:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=47374"},"modified":"2017-05-09T09:57:00","modified_gmt":"2017-05-09T08:57:00","slug":"iran-tightens-screws-on-free-expression-ahead-of-presidential-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=47374","title":{"rendered":"Iran tightens the screw on free expression ahead of presidential election"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the 14 June presidential election approaching, Iran\u2019s leaders are moving to prevent the outburst of protest that followed the disputed 2009 poll by tightening access to the web and silencing \u201cnegative\u201d news. Raha Zahedpour<\/strong> reports<\/p>\n

\"Saeed<\/a> Iran\u2019s state television this week held the second of three presidential debates. Unlike the 2009 debates, no one-on-one debating was allowed. In these debates, resembling game shows, candidates have less than five minutes to talk about their policies on different issues, and other candidates were chosen at random to question the speaker. Candidates were then left with very limited time to conclude after the end of questions.<\/p>\n

The eight qualified candidates could not escape Iran\u2019s strict censorship during their campaigns. Iranian state TV censored reformist candidate Mohammad Reza Aref\u2019s speech in a programme broadcast for the Iranian diaspora on 26 May. The recording was halted and not resumed.<\/p>\n

In another programme on the domestic Channel One, conservative candidate Mohsen Rezaei was censored for talking about how unemployment devastated a family who lost their children in the war, and were led to suicidal thoughts as a result of pressures from the economic crisis and inflation.<\/p>\n

State television censored documentaries made by the campaigns of each candidate \u2014 including Saeed Jalili, Ayatollah Khamenei\u2019s favoured candidate \u2014 showing that even a favourite could not escape the sharp blades of censorship.<\/p>\n

Iran carefully vetted the candidates in this year\u2019s race: Hashemi Rafsanjani and Rahim Mashaei were disqualified from the upcoming presidential election by Iran\u2019s Guardian Council. Hashemi Rafsanjani, 78, was dropped from the race for being too old. Mashaei was disqualified because he promotes nationalism and nationalist Islam \u2014 despite being a part of hard-liners faction.<\/p>\n

Even before the election\u2019s candidates were announced, Iran\u2019s ruling elite moved to slow internet connections, blocked access to Gmail accounts, and clamped down on circumvention tools. All over the country, Iranians are struggling to access social media, or even check their email.<\/p>\n

Authorities have also tightened up web censorship \u2014 censoring even influential political figures close to the government. A blog belonging to one of Rafsanji\u2019s advisors was blocked recently. The move raised eyebrows, because Hashemi Rafsanji is key revolutionary figure, a former president, a former head of Parliament and the current chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council of Iran.<\/p>\n

Iran also shut down sites aligned to presidential hopeful Efandiar Rahim Mashaei.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Ahmadi Moghadam, the chief commander of Police, said that the authorities would not allow any distractions around the election. Following the announcement, jailed journalists and bloggers who were released after being imprisoned and sentenced after the 2009 uprising were arrested once more. Former presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi are still under house arrest.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s press has also faced enormous challenges in reporting on the election. The ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance invited journalists to a seminar about what could be reported. Officials emphasised that \u201cnegative news\u201d should not be published. Subsequently, some papers received official notices for their content. The websites of reformist newspapers Mardom Saalaary and Bahar were blocked, even though print editions of the newspapers continued to be distributed<\/p>\n

In light of restrictions, rights organisations have cast doubt on the election\u2019s freedom. In a 24 May statement<\/a> Human Rights Watch asked, \u201cHow can Iran hold free elections when opposition leaders are behind bars and people can\u2019t speak freely?\u201d<\/p>\n

Raha Zahedpour is a journalist and researcher living in London. She writes under a pseudonym<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the 14 June presidential election approaching, Iran\u2019s leaders are moving to prevent the outburst of protest that followed the disputed 2009 poll, by tightening access to the web and silencing \u201cnegative\u201d news. Raha Zahedpour<\/strong> reports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4060],"tags":[7433,1729,103,16,571,7359],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47374"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47374"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48056,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47374\/revisions\/48056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}