Pro-reform daily closed one day after bringing out first issue in five years

Reporters Without Borders condemns the pro-reform daily Yas-e-no’s closure on 16 May, immediately after it brought out its first issue in five years. The mouthpiece of the Participation Front, the main opposition party, it was closed on the orders of the Commission for Press Authorisation and Surveillance (an offshoot of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance) at Tehran prosecutor general Said Mortazavi’s request. “We call for the immediate reopening of this newspaper,” Reporters Without Borders said. “With just a month to go to the presidential election, it is vital that all political parties should have equal and fair use of newspapers and radio and TV stations to relay their views.” The issue which Yas-e-no had managed to publish on 16 May, after a five-year legal battle, openly supported Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the presidential candidate backed by the Participation Front. Yas-e-no and another leading pro-reform daily, Sharq, were raided and closed on 18 February 2004 (on the eve of a parliamentary election run-off), a day after publishing extracts of a letter from reformist parliamentarians to the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, blaming him for what they called an “electoral coup d’etat,” namely a ban on many pro-reform candidates. Yas-e-no appealed against the closure order, beginning a five-year legal wrangle that ended in February of this year, when a Tehran court imposed a fine of 100,000 toman (150 euros) on the newspaper’s editor, Mohammad Naimipour. Mousavi was himself able to bring out the first issue of his own newspaper, Kalameh Sabz, today. Nikzad Zangane, a journalist who defends women’s rights in her blog, was meanwhile released yesterday after being held for 17 days (see this article) but there is still no word of four other journalists (all men) who like Zangane were arrested during May Day demonstrations on 1 May in Tehran and who are still being held. Zangane’s release’s brings the number of journalists and bloggers currently detained in Iran to 13, one of them a woman.