Newspapers Closed for a Three-month Review

Nazanin Namdar, Rooz Online:

Iranian student news agency (ISNA) reports that the press court will resume its work next week to publicly review the case of more than 130 publications that have been closed during the next three months.

Iran daily reports that the trial of a number of film and cinema publications too have been held behind closed doors, although other news agencies report that the press court will start work on other newspapers in the presence of a press jury.

Judge Saremi will review 60 press cases in Tehran's public court relating to newspapers that had been temporarily shut down over the past few years ago. Two veteran judges, along with the notorious judge Mortazavi, now Tehran's top prosecutor, were responsible for mass closures of tens of publications, have been assigned to work with judge Saremi to review the cases in three months.

Reformist journalists protested a jury that consists of close allies of hard-line Saffar Harandi, the new Culture Minister while they tensely await the outcome of the trials. Many of them actually believe that Harandi who is a radical right wing conservative and an old critic of the 1998 press boom in Iran will grant them permissions to resume their publications again. But some have said that even if they are permitted to publish again, working under current circumstances in Iran seems impossible. READ MORE

It may be hard to access the full list of all closed publications. Even Iranians are not following up the fate of the shut down newspapers and as they only read the mainstream ones. Former director of the domestic press in Ministry of Culture has said that he witnessed how 80 publications were shut down and around 40 of them were newspapers.

Most of the seized publications were accused of spreading lies and propaganda against national security, and for offending Islamic laws and government authorities. In most cases the complaints originated from influential authorities in the conservative camp and Basij and Sepah commanders.

The majority of the publications were closed down in the spring of 2000, which was dubbed as the "Autumn of the Press" because there were so many open and free publications out there then. Fourteen of the most successful and popular publications with the largest circulation of 3 million copies were shut down in the same year. Many did not even last long. "Salam" daily was the oldest and longest running which was shut down too. Students' protests following the closure of Salam led the country into a serious unrest that was later called "Iran's second revolution" and caught the attention of the world community.

Many believe that the press complaints have faded away in the course of time. More than one thousand journalists have lost their jobs and millions of readers are awaiting the court verdict.