Arash Bahmani

TEHRAN—What happened in Iran after the disputed June 12 presidential election affected everyone’s lives in Iran, but arguably, those who have suffered the most are Iranian journalists. Journalists have been sentenced to long prison terms, their publications were shut down, and many of them were either silenced or forced to leave their homeland.

The large numbers of Iranian journalists working in American and European media and many more in Iraq and Turkey awaiting their U.S. or E.U. visas are evidence that the situation has gotten worse for journalists in Iran in the aftermath of the election.

The Iranian authorities now are holding at least forty-seven journalists in prison, more than any single country has imprisoned since 1996, according to a new survey by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). While many of the detainees were arrested in the aftermath of the election, a recent CPJ survey found that authorities are continuing to wage an aggressive campaign to round up independent and opposition journalists. At least twenty-six journalists have been jailed in the past two months alone, CPJ found.
The number of jailed journalists is the highest CPJ has recorded in a single country since December 1996, when it documented seventy-eight imprisonments in Turkey.

Journalists attempting to leave Iran, many of whom have never lifted anything heavier than a pen and a piece of paper, are now forced to endure hours of hiking in the mountains, and suffer insults and severe anxiety in their efforts to be smuggled out of the country and join the free world.

The news coming from Iranian journalists seeking asylum indicates that they are experiencing a very difficult time. Their condition in Iraq and Turkey, their most frequent destinations, is so deplorable that it has raised the objection of many human rights organizations. They have no money to support themselves, sometimes lacking money simply to buy food, yet they must travel long distances to cities where there are European embassies in order to try to seek political asylum.

Despite such difficult conditions, the number of Iranian journalists seeking asylum is increasing day by day. But why are they willing to undergo all this pain and suffering?

An Iranian journalist temporarily living in Turkey says that he has accepted that he must endure this pain if he is to remain free. The journalist, who wished to remain anonymous while in Turkey, said, “I calculated that I would rather suffer for a few short years and get out instead of going to prison for many years. Now, after prison, I would have to deal with the intense pressure of the security forces. Considering my options, I decided to leave Iran. This was very difficult.”

Many journalists either were arrested during the days before the election and the turbulent period that followed it and sentenced to long prison terms, or had received a visit from the security forces of the Islamic Republic at their homes or offices.

Another journalist in Iraq says, “I really wanted to be able to work as a journalist in the free world. I wanted to work where I could write without restrictions. I did not want to die and never have had the opportunity to work in a free environment.”

The exodus of these journalists will create a major vacuum in the Iranian media. The flight of many expert journalists and photographers would mean that the number of professional journalists working in the Iranian media would dramatically decrease.

An Iranian photographer in Europe says, “There may be a vacuum in the short term, but I guarantee you that this vacuum will not last long. This is exactly what happened after the 1979 revolution, when many journalists left Iran, but their places were filled.”

The events of the past ten months have wrought tremendous changes among the media community in Iran. While many conventional journalists have been forced to flee the country to avoid arrest or imprisonment, their role in Iranian society partly has been filled by the appearance of citizen journalists, the increasing influence of the Internet, and the popularity of satellite channels. However, all journalists jointly face a huge problem: the inability to report the news without government pressure and official censorship. The end result of these pressures is an increase in the speed of Iranian journalism’s decline.

Arash Bahmani is an Iranian journalist.