
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the Iranian government’s attempt to silence coverage of the current wave of protests by Persian-language media based outside the country, which are a major source of alternative news and information for Iranians.
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Domestic media outlets under strict government control have ignored the anti-government protests in more than 100 cities throughout the country during the past eight days, in which 22 people been killed and around 17,000 have been arrested, including several citizen-journalists.
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Yesterday, the Iranian embassy in London wrote to the United Kingdom’s Office of Communications (OFCOM), which regulates the broadcast media, asking it to censor Persian-language media based in the UK on the grounds that their coverage of the protests had been inciting people to “armed revolt.”
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The letter’s two main targets are Manoto, a privately-owned TV channel based in London, and BBC Persian, the state-owned BBC’s Persian-language TV channel, which many Iranian activists and intellectuals nonetheless criticize for not distancing itself sufficiently from the Iranian government line.
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“After disrupting Internet access and blocking social networks, the Islamic Republic of Iran is using the need to combat calls for violence and support for terrorism as a pretext for silencing the last sources of freely and independently reported news and information used by many Iranians,” said Reza Moini, the head of RSF’s Iran/Afghanistan desk.
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RSF has previously criticized the attempts by the Iranian judicial system and intelligence services to influence the Persian-language sections of international media outlets by putting pressure on Iranian journalists based abroad and on their families still in Iran.
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Iran is ranked 165th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index.
https://rsf.org/en/news/iran-tries-censor-coverage-protests-media-based-abroad
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(c) 2018 Reporters Without Borders
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