No election victory without a free press
No election victory without a free press
By Jean-François Julliard and Reza Moini
The governments of democratic countries must not recognise President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection in Iran. An election requires a free press to monitor its conduct and investigate fraud allegations. That condition has not been met in Tehran and the rest of the country. The international media can no longer work. Foreign journalists have been forbidden to go out on to the streets to report. The Iranian media have been told to carry nothing but reports hailing Ahmadinejad’s “fine and sweeping” election victory
Journalists who do not cooperate are threatened, beaten or imprisoned. There has been no news of at least 10 journalists since 12 June. With luck, some of them are holed up somewhere, waiting for better days. The others may well be in jail, with the journalists who have already been there for some time. Iran was already the Middle East’s biggest prison for journalists before the presidential election, with a total of 12 detained.
It is nonetheless essential that foreign reporters stay in Iran and keep working. If they leave, there is every chance that the security forces will lose all self-control and crack down much harder on the regime’s opponents. If President Ahmadinejad does not agree to respect press freedom, he must be made to see reason. A clear, unambiguous rejection of the election results by European leaders could force Ahmadinejad to yield. Encouraged by Hezbollah’s defeat in Lebanon, Barack Obama had begun to dream of real change in the Middle East. He should not give ground on the values he claims to defend.
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The media’s freedom to work is an essential component of the electoral process. It is true that for the first time there were televised live debates and the candidates were able to express their views more freely than usual. But that is not enough. The media must now be able to report the positions of those who are disputing the results. Reporters should be allowed to interview those expressing their anger and outrage. It is, for example, unacceptable that the newspaper owned by Mehdi Karoubi, one of the presidential candidates, is not allowed to publish information about his party. Ahmadinejad’s men are stationed in newsrooms to ensure that orders are obeyed.
Although foreign correspondents have not been jailed, they must cope with the same obstacles that their Iranian colleagues are experiencing in gathering and sending information. The telephone networks are monitored, while the Internet is being filtered and sometimes rendered inaccessible. Email and SMS messages often fail to reach their destination. In such circumstances, sending TV footage, especially live footage, is an almost impossible task. The prestigious BBC’s broadcasts are being jammed, the satellite TV station Al Arabiya’s bureau has been closed for a week, the German TV station ARD’s correspondent was confined to his hotel room, and several other European TV reporters have been expelled.
The Iranian authorities are going to use every means possible to try to avoid massive media coverage of the electoral fraud allegations and the protests. They have forbidden the foreign press to cover unauthorised demonstrations, including those by Mirhossein Mousavi’s supporters. They fear that that the protests and the demands being made by the demonstrators could spread quickly throughout the country.
Jean-François Julliard is Reporters Without Borders secretary-general. Reza Moini is head of the Reporters Without Borders Iran desk.