Iran expels AFP journalist

AFP, Iranian authorities expelled Agence France-Presse deputy bureau chief in Tehran Jay Deshmukh on Friday without giving any official explanation for their decision.

Deshmukh, a 40-year-old Indian national who had been in the country since January 2009, was stripped of his press card along with 10 other correspondents on February 15, a day after a major Tehran protest.

The demonstration was the most significant one in the Iranian capital in a year and was covered by AFP and most of the international media.

AFP chief executive Emmanuel Hoog lodged an official protest with the Iranian authorities, in Tehran and Paris.

"Jay Desmukh, in common with the whole of the Tehran bureau, does a great job and with a professionalism that is universally recognised," he said.

"Thus to attack this journalist and AFP, as the Iran authorities have done, is totally unjust and unjustifiable," he added.

"AFP is dedicated to providing rigorous and balanced coverage of events in Iran as it does everywhere."

The French foreign ministry deplored the expulsion.

"This pitiful decision by the Iranian authorities reflects a new deterioration in the working conditions of journalists in Iran," said its spokesman Bernard Valero.

"We have expressed to the Iranian ambassador our concern and incomprehension at this new infringement of press freedom which will not be without consequences," he told reporters.

Deshmukh joined AFP in 2001 in Mumbai and worked at the agency's Baghdad office from 2005 until 2008.

Foreign and Iranian media have been the target of severe repression in Iran since the contested re-election of conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2009.

The pro-reform opposition has charged that the vote was rigged and, for several months, Iran was gripped by a wave of popular protests unseen since the 1979 Islamic revolution, prompting one of the worst political crises to face the Iranian regime in its history.

Thousands of protesters have been arrested since 2009 and hundreds of anti-government opponents have been put on trial and convicted, some of them receiving heavy sentences.

Iranian journalists also paid a heavy price. More than 40 are currently in jail according to a toll issued in December 2010 by the New York-based International Committee for the Protection of Journalists.

The foreign media has also been targeted and dozens of reporters were either expelled from Iran since 2009, their press cards revoked or entry visas to the country denied.

Coverage by foreign correspondents is largely restricted, and they are banned from reporting at the scene on protests by the opposition and assigned minders to report on official rallies.

The foreign media also must get official permits to interview Iranian officials and cover stories on the ground. They are almost always excluded from covering news conference, except for those given by Ahmadinejad or the foreign ministry.

Most western television and radio networks, such as the BBC and Voice of America, which provide a key source of information for many Iranians, are systematically jammed in the capital Tehran and in most big cities.

The Iranian authorities also block many of the Internet websites based abroad, particularly of the opposition and of Western media.

The Western media is daily denounced by Iranian leaders who accuse it of taking part in a "plot" against the Islamic republic which they say is hatched by the United States, Israel, Britain and European countries.