Posts tagged : "Press freedom"

Kourosh Ziabari - Democracy in Exile: Spooked by the success of citizen journalists in revealing the magnitude of the state-sponsored crackdown on protests and the critical role of popular public figures in mobilizing grassroots activists, Iran's parliament is pursuing two pieces of legislation that boil down to a government fiat that Iranians shouldn't have public opinions and express them freely. As part of the first legislation, which is being euphemistically promoted as a "bill to criminalize the publication of news contradicting citizenship rights," the judicial commission of Iran's Majlis, or parliament, is working to codify into law a ban on publishing—both by individuals and media outlets—any news that may...

Kourosh Ziabari - Atlantic Council: The sweeping nationwide protests that followed the death of Mahsa Jina Amini in police custody on September 16, 2022 have been distinct from previous rounds of uprisings in Iran. Aside from the inclusive nature of the movement, which has straddled social boundaries and unified people of all stripes, the government crackdown has also been unprecedented. To quell what appeared to be a thundering revolutionary wave, the Islamic Republic unleashed violence, killing at least 524 people, making over nineteen thousand arrests, and, for the first time in years, engaging in a head-on confrontation with the nation’s most prominent artists, athletes, and celebrities who sympathized...

Kourosh Ziabari - Arab Center Washington DC: Over the past four months, the international community has been heaping praise on the Iranian people for their audacious uprising, which has been challenging the country’s clerical establishment despite a heavy-handed crackdown that is now being bolstered by a wave of retaliatory executions. The ongoing protest movement, whose spirit and core message have been captured in its unifying slogan, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” was initially ignited by the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, who died while in the custody of Iran’s “morality police,” a force that millions of Iranians have decried for its brutality and arbitrary enforcement of the...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: The nationwide uprising that ensued after the death of 22-year-old Iranian woman Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police in September added a new dimension to the global media coverage of Iran and dislodged the exclusive focus previously set on the country’s nuclear program and the stalled negotiations to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Now, the media are spotlighting the heroism of the Iranian women braving an overwhelming crackdown to reclaim their dispossessed rights, as well as the often-untold stories of ordinary citizens who are these days the protagonists of an epoch-making, dramatic struggle for freedom. These stories are being relayed to an...

Kourosh Ziabari - Al-Monitor: As the talks to revive the landmark 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action continue with uncertainty, the administration of President Ebrahim Raisi is stepping up pressure on activists and dissidents in a bid to ensure at least on the domestic front that it is able to rule the roost. Building on decades of experience in the judiciary where he served as chief justice for nearly three years between 2019-2021, Ebrahim Raisi is working with other branches of the government to stifle critical voices and tighten the noose around the media, political activists, artists and other influencers with unconventional views challenging the status quo, including the forlorn state of the...

Kourosh Ziabari - Foreign Policy: When Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was running for office, he famously said in a May 2021 televised debate how much he deplored the disruption that Iranian children who play online games experience due to the nation’s poor internet infrastructure and weak signals, arguing that he had plans to boost internet connectivity if elected. He made similar remarks about his displeasure that university students are being sealed off from their peers internationally because of the country’s flawed internet services. As simplistic as his youth outreach may have been, Raisi was trying to portray himself as a politician who related to the young population’s sensitivities around sustainable internet...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: One doesn’t have to be very old to recollect the emergence and blossoming of Iran’s reform movement. In the May 1997 presidential election, when many observers had reached the foregone conclusion that the establishment confidant, conservative cleric Ali Akbar Nategh-Nouri, would secure an easy victory courtesy of gerrymandering and voter fraud, a reformist underdog turned out to be a dark horse and baffled the world. Mohammad Khatami, who was previously minister of culture between 1982 and 1992 and little known internationally, bagged 69.6% of the votes in a presidential contest that saw a turnout of 79.92%, a figure not chronicled since the Iranian Revolution. Khatami’s ascendancy was a...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: The countdown has started for one of the most theatrical presidential contests of recent times in the United States. While the entire world is fixated on a thus far incurable pestilence that has claimed more than a million lives, even the pandemic cannot divert global attention from the showdown between two heavyweights vying for the most powerful office in the world. The race features a recalcitrant former business tycoon turned politician considered by 27% of American adults as the biggest threat to world peace, intermittently described as “racist” and “misogynist,” up against his 77-year-old rival from the Democratic Party, endorsed by his former boss, ex-president Barack Obama, as a...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Anti-Muslim bigotry is on the rise globally. Let’s call a spade a spade. Islamophobia, even though some people prefer to tiptoe around using the term so that they don’t acknowledge the gravity of this gruesome form of racism, is an undeniable reality in the 21st century, casting a dark shadow over the lives of the nearly 1.8 billion Muslims dotted across the four corners of the globe. From burning down and vandalizing mosques to physical attacks on people appearing to be Muslims walking down the streets, hate crimes against Muslim students on university campuses, verbal abuse and death threats directed against Muslim citizens and the Islamic faith being constantly slandered in the media,...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran’s official coronavirus death toll, which topped 20,000 on Monday, is under domestic scrutiny after a reformist newspaper was shuttered for suggesting the real toll was 20 times higher. On August 10, Iran’s Press Supervisory Board issued an order temporarily revoking the publishing license of the Jahan-e Sanat newspaper, which has been in print since 2004. The reason cited for the decision was an interview run by the paper the previous day titled “No Trust in the Government’s Statistics”, in which an epidemiologist alleged the real coronavirus fatality numbers could be at least 20 times higher than the government’s official tally. The official toll as of Monday was 20,643 deaths...