Friday 10 December 2010

Iran arrests editors of opposition newspaper

Washington Post

TEHRAN - At least three editors of Iran's leading opposition newspaper, including its editor in chief, were arrested Tuesday in the daily' s newsroom by security forces, journalists working for the paper confirmed Wednesday.

The arrests of the editors and a fourth man associated with the paper followed campus anti-government protests Tuesday, when hundreds of students at several universities marked "Student Day" with demonstrations. Videos on YouTube showed sit-down protests, but there were no signs of widespread clashes with security forces, as happened during similar demonstrations last year.

Ahmad Gholami, chief editor of Sharq, which resumed publishing in April after a three-year ban, was led away from his desk by plainclothes police officers. Two other journalists, Keyvan Mehregan, a prominent political journalist, and international editor Farzaneh Roustaei were also arrested, as was Ali Khodabakhsh, according to some an investor in the paper.

"They just came in and took our colleagues," said one journalist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.

Sharq is one of the last remaining newspapers critical of the government that is allowed to be published. There are, however, hundreds of Web sites that are critical of Iran's leaders. Since its reopening, Sharq has been extremely careful in its reporting to avoid closure.

Iranian journalists have been told to refrain from printing the names of former presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who last year became figureheads of a grass-roots opposition movement that disputed the results of Iran's June 2009 presidential election. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared reelected in a landslide, but the opposition charged that he won through massive fraud.

On Tuesday, the paper published a special section labeled, "The Student Movement is Alive," in which a parliament member critical of the government said that "critical students are more worthy than indifferent students.'"

"They are trying to silence students and universities," parliament member Mostafa Kabakebian wrote.

Opposition Web sites reported a handful of arrests as groups of students on several campuses defied strict security measures and shouted slogans against the government Tuesday. The protests show that even though there haven't been serious street demonstrations for nearly a year, there is still a level of dissatisfaction over government policies.




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