Government Spokesperson Reacts to Criminal Charges Against a Newspaper: It Seems the Cartoonist Aims to Address Community Demands

Following legal action against the Ham-Mihan newspaper for publishing a critical cartoon, Fatemeh Mohajerani, the spokesperson for the Islamic Republic government, cautiously called for "tolerance" from the judiciary. On Saturday, October 28, Mohajerani wrote on her account on the filtered social media platform X: "The prosecution by the judiciary is within the duties of this institution, but it seems that the designer intends to pursue the demands of the community. We hope the judiciary will handle this incident with tolerance and that the activities of the Ham-Mihan newspaper will not be harmed." After the publication of a cartoon depicting "Job, the Prophet" that satirized Mohajerani's remarks about lifting the internet filtering conditional on the community's patience, the Tehran prosecutor's office filed charges against the newspaper. According to the Hamshahri newspaper, affiliated with the Tehran municipality, this legal action was due to the portrayal of "Job, the Prophet" in cartoon form. Recently, Mohajerani had told citizens that "patience is needed to solve internet and filtering problems." In this cartoon, "Job, the Prophet," who is considered by some to be a symbol of patience, has run out of patience with promises and is inquiring from the government spokesperson about solving the filtering issue. Lifting filtering and internet restrictions was one of Masoud Pezeshkian's promises during his campaign to succeed Ebrahim Raisi. However, in recent days, the head of the Islamic Republic government called for the abandonment of this demand and, in response to a question about it, said, "Given the current situation, do not talk about lifting filtering." These remarks by Pezeshkian led to criticism from his supporters, including Abbas Abdi, who stated that if promises such as lifting the filter, improving women's rights, and foreign relations are not realized, not only will no positive change occur, but "the consensus with society will be definitively broken." Najat Bahrami, a freelance journalist, told Voice of America that Pezeshkian's allies, mainly government reformists including Javad Zarif, were seeking "achievement-making" by raising issues such as lifting the filter and removing compulsory hijab. He stated that when the atmosphere of government censorship rises to the point where media are instructed to "remove the emoji option" from their Telegram channels because people respond to the removal of Hezbollah, Hamas, and IRGC officials with "laughing emojis," in such an environment, reformists bring up the issue of lifting filtering with the aim of "achievement-making."