"It seems to me this current push to make Iran look imminently dangerous is just another attempt to soften the world up for Israel's upcoming attack on that country."
Washington, 10 February (IranVNC)â€"In a survey released today, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists [CPJ] accused the Iranian government of curtailing press freedoms and trying to reassert control over the media.
The report, entitled "Attacks on the Press in 2008", also says Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has used state subsidies as a "weapon" against newspapers and magazines that are critical of his government.
"Ahmadinejad sought to suppress independent media by manipulating government subsidies, exerting censorship, and using the punitive tools of detention and harassment," the report says.
Noting that Iran’s economy is largely government-based, and that publications heavily rely on ad revenue from state-owned companies, CPJ said that Ahmadinejad’s administration urged government institutions to withhold advertising from critical publications.
The Aftab Yazd daily said it faced a 60 percent drop in state subsidies after it was identified in a 2007 government report as a leading government critic, the survey reports.
The CPJ, a nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide, reports that more than 30 Iranian journalists were investigated or jailed during 2008. Many of those were denied basic rights in prisons or subject to secret trials without access to defense attorneys, the group claims.
Those imprisoned included Mohammad Seddiq Kaboudvand, the head of the Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan, and Mojtaba Lotfi, a blogger who was sentenced to four years in prison in November on anti-state charges, CPJ reports.
In addition, Iranian authorities continued to crack down on Kurdish, Azeri and Arabic-language publications, along with journalists who tried to cover the government’s treatment of ethnic minorities, the report said.
"Journalists defending women’s rights faced a particularly strong backlash from the government," CPJ reports, adding that at least seven women’s rights writers were summoned to court during 2008.
In anticipation of the June 2009 presidential election, the Iranian government is also stepping up its Internet censorship, the press freedom group reports.
"The government issued regular bulletins to Internet service providers, identifying critical news, politics, women’s rights, and human rights sites to block," the survey said.