Reporters Without Borders: Continued Internet Censorship and Suppression of Citizen Journalists in Iran

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the intensification of internet censorship and the suppression of citizen journalists in Iran. This international organization defending press freedom and journalists estimated in a statement released on Thursday that more than 94 bloggers have been arrested in Iran during the current calendar year. Radio Farda discussed the statement with Reza Moieni, the head of the Iran section at this organization. In the statement, Reporters Without Borders noted that on June 19, 2017, Asal Esmaeilzadeh, a photojournalist, was arrested by Branch 2 of the Culture and Media Prosecutor's Office without a summons or charges. Her husband, Saeed Saif, the director of the Iran Watch website, was summoned to this prosecutor's office on the same day. He wrote on Twitter shortly after his wife's arrest: 'In the interrogation at Branch 2, they asked me to write false statements against the Rouhani government. When I refused, my wife Asal Esmaeilzadeh was arrested without a summons!' Since the beginning of the calendar year 2017 (December 31, 2016), Reporters Without Borders has counted more than 94 arrests for internet-related crimes, many of which are related to the use of Telegram across the country. The organization also reported on the imprisonment of three citizen journalists: Mohammad Mohajer, Alireza Tavakoli, and Mohammad Mahdi Zamanzadeh. These three young men were arrested in September 2016 for reporting on a Telegram channel and were charged with 'insulting the leader and founder of the Islamic Republic, insulting sacred values, and propaganda against the regime.' They were tried on April 8, 2017, in Branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court and each sentenced to 12 years in prison. The statement from Reporters Without Borders also mentioned that on June 12, the families of Saeed Mojtaba Bagheri, Sobhan Jafari, Javad Jamshidi, Nima Keshvari, and Saeed Naqdi, managers of Telegram channels who were arrested on March 16, 2017, by a military intelligence agency, complained to the Parliament's Article 90 Commission about the judiciary's handling of their cases. Reporters Without Borders reported that these five prisoners, along with their fellow inmate Ali Ahmadinia, who are all in Ward 22-A of Evin Prison under the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, have been on hunger strike since June 19 in protest of their detention conditions. The state of media and press freedom in Iran was ranked 165 out of 180 countries in the 2017 Reporters Without Borders report.