The "right of reply" as a new means of pressure

Reporters Without Borders today denounced the latest harassment of Iran's reformist press, whose leading daily paper, Yas-e no, was banned for 10 days on 29 September for defying a request to print for a second day the same "right of reply" article by hardline Teheran prosecutor Saïd Mortazavi. The paper eventually agreed and was allowed to reappear from 1 October. "This situation would be a joke if it was not for the alarming state of press freedom in Iran," said Reportors Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard. "The judiciary, controlled by hardliners, has been busy shutting down newspapers, summoning journalists and making bogus investigations in cases such as the murder of photographer Zahra Kazemi. Now it is using the principle of 'right of reply' to fill up the space in reformist papers." Mortazavi, formerly head of the so-called "press court," cited article 23 of the press law, which provides for a "right of reply" with an article accompanied by the offending article's headline, in the same place in the paper, and without editing, but limited to twice the length of the original article. Mortazavi sent several rebuttals to articles in the paper about the Kazemi case and the prison conditions of journalist Abbas Abdi, who has been in jail for several months. The latest reply, which occupied two-thirds of the 16-page paper, was published, with a few cuts, on 27 September. The judge objected to the cuts and complained it was positioned too close to reports about Abdi's hunger-strike. He demanded that it be printed again in its entirety in the next day's paper, starting on the front page. The paper initially refused to do this but then yielded. Other media harassment in recent days has included a three-year suspended jail sentence by the Teheran revolutionary court on 28 September on a journalist working for the reformist press, Fariba Davoudi Mohajer, who wrote articles that were allegedly "anti-government propaganda" and which "harmed state security." He was also accused of signing a petition to release prisoners. Mohsen Sazgara, editor of the Internet website Alliran and the closed reformist daily Jameh, was sentenced to a year in prison by the court on 27 September for insulting the Supreme Guide of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His lawyer said the trial was held in secret and that the court did not say which of the charges he was convicted of. Eskandar Deldam, of the suspended weekly Tabarestan, was summoned last week by the state prosecutor's office after writing a satirical article about the state radio and TV network, which is directly controlled by Ayatollah Khamenei