Reporters Without Borders claims that journalists are being summoned for interrogation at Iran’s Ministry of Culture. It accuses the ministry of becoming “a censorship agency that has been turned into an all-out mechanism of control and repression since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president.”
According to Reporters Without Borders, Iranian Culture Minister Mohammad Hosseini and his aides are issuing summons to journalists, especially targeting those who work for the foreign media. The report indicates that the interrogations are “often violent.”
Reporters Without Borders writes: “These interrogations are intolerable and we urge international cultural bodies to terminate all cooperation with this ministry on the grounds that it authorizes these interrogations and permits the mistreatment of intellectuals on its own premises.”
The press rights groups refers to Iran as “one of the world’s most repressive countries.” As the latest evidence of the Islamic Republic’s continued persecution of media activists, the group points to the recent arrests of writer and leading economist Faroborz Rais Dana, journalist Rahman Bozari and Reza Taleshian Jolodarzadeh, the editor of Sobh-e Azadi.
