3/1/2018 8:07:14 PM
Reporters Without Borders demands the release of all detained journalists in Iran
28.02.2018 - Badly injured Majzooban Nor journalists transferred to prison
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has learned that Majzooban Nor news website journalists Reza Entesari and Kasra Nouri were transferred to Greater Tehran Prison on 23 February after recovering consciousness. They were arrested on the night of 19 February along with other contributors to the website including Mostafa Abdi, Avisha Jalaledin, Saleh Moradi, Sina Entesari, Shima Entesari, Amir Nouri, Mohammad Sharifi Moghadam, Mohammad Reza Darvishi and Sepideh Moradi. The journalists were badly beaten by police and plainclothes militiamen, as seen in this video, posted by the website’s editor, showing violence being used to arrest members of a Sufi religious order called the Gonabadi Dervishes.
01.02.2018 - Photographer Soheil Arabi badly beaten during prison transfer
Reporters Without Borders is concerned about the physical condition of Soheil Arabi, an imprisoned photographer who was awarded the RSF Press Freedom Prize in the citizen-journalist category last November. After beginning a hunger strike in Tehran’s Evin prison on 25 January, he was transferred to Greater Tehran Prison, on the south side of the capital, four days later.
He reported to his mother on 30 January that he was badly beaten by guards at the time of his transfer. “Thirteen people grabbed me and beat me, but I am continuing my hunger strike,” he said. He began the hunger strike to protest against the transfer of two women political prisoners to a prison for ordinary inmates.Arabi has been in prison since December 2013. After his arrest, he was mistreated and subjected to solitary confinement for two months to force him to confess to involvement in creating a Facebook network that “blasphemed” Islam and criticized the government. A long judicial saga ensued in which he was initially sentenced to three years in prison, 30 lashes and a heavy fine. A few months later, he was retried and sentenced to death, but the death sentence was eventually overturned and he was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison instead.
23.01.2018 – Arrests of citizen-journalists using Telegram
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the detention of Yousef Hassani Tabar, a citizen-journalist based in in the southwestern city of Khorramabad who edits a news channel called Seh Noghteh (Three Points) on the popular encrypted messaging app Telegram.
Three weeks after being arrested, charged and then freed on bail, Tabar was arrested again at his home by plainclothes members of the Revolutionary Guards and was taken to an unknown location, where he went on hunger strike until he was transferred to Khorramabad’s main prison. Plainclothesmen searched his workplace and his father’s home on 13 January, seizing all the mobile phones of his family and colleagues. The Seh Noghteh channel has announced its closure.
On 8 January, the prosecutor in the southeastern city of Kerman announced the arrests of eight people who edit news channels that use Telegram. RSF is currently verifying all of these cases. According to various sources, around 3,700 people have been arrested since the start of a wave of protest in more than 100 cities throughout Iran. Many citizen-journalists are among those arrested.
At least 25 people have been killed and more than 3,700 people, including many citizen-journalists, have been arrested in the wave of protests in cities throughout the country that began on 28 December. According to several sources, at least three young protesters were killed while detained in Arak, Dezful and Tehran’s Evin prison. The regime claims that these detainees “committed suicide.”
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