As Iranian media workers marked the country's Journalists' Day, the head of the Tehran Journalists' Association, Akbar Montajabi, on August 8 highlighted the plight of the scores of journalists arrested amid the latest wave of anti-regime protests, speaking of a "dark era" for journalism.
"Investigations indicate that over the past year more than 100 journalists have been arrested. Nevertheless, the flow of information continues uninhibited, always finding its way, much like water," Montajabi said.
"This dark era persists, with the system's main agenda being the arrest, elimination, expulsion, and now the recent trend of exiling journalists," Montajabi said.
Marking the occasion, Tehran-based HamMihan newspaper published the names of scores of detained media workers, shedding light on the detention of at least 76 journalists, reporters, and photographers since the start of protests across Iran in September 2022 following the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman arrested for wearing her head covering improperly.
The newspaper said that the detention in November of Niloufar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi, two female journalists who reported on Amini's death, marked the start of the current wave of repression against Iranian journalists.
Hamedi took a photo of Amini's parents embracing in the Tehran hospital where their daughter was lying in a coma while in police custody.
Hamedi's post of the photo on Twitter was the first media mention of the case and one of her last posts before being arrested days later.
Amini died days after being detained by the notorious morality police for allegedly violating the country's strict female dress code. Authorities have blamed "underlying diseases" for the cause of death, but witnesses and family members say Amini was beaten while in custody.
Mahsa Amini in the hospital
Elaheh Mohammadi covered Amini's funeral in her hometown of Saghez, which marked the beginning of the mass protests that have swept the country.
Both journalists, during their final court session at Tehran's Islamic Revolutionary Court, rejected all accusations and said they were proud to be the voice of the Iranian people.
HamMihan also highlighted the names of Yalda Moayeri, Hoda Tohidi, Alireza Khoshbakht, Jabbar Dastbaz, Samira Ali Nejad, and many other journalists detained since the onset of the protests.
Other Iranian journalists that suffered legal punishment for their coverage of the protests include:
- Behrouz Behzadi, editor in chief of the Etemad newspaper, who received a six-month prison sentence, later converted to a one-year media activity ban;
- Marzieh Mahmoudi, editor of the Tejarat News website, who was fined 240 million rials ($480) and exiled to the northwestern city of Torbat-e Jam for a year;
- Saeedeh Shafiei and Nasim Soltanbeigi, sentenced by Tehran's Islamic Revolutionary Court to a cumulative 4 1/2 years in prison on charges including "assembly and collusion" and "propaganda" against the system;
- Ali Pourtabatabai, editor of Qom News, detained for weeks after reporting on the suspicious poisoning of female students in the central city of Qom, who currently awaits his sentence.
The sentences come amid unprecedented shows of defiance by women and schoolgirls in what appears to be the biggest threat to the Islamic government since the 1979 revolution.
Several thousand people have been arrested since Amini's death, including many protesters, lawyers, activists, and digital-rights defenders.