Mass Arrests of Journalists Follow Iran Elections

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Reporters Without Borders is alarmed by the fact that no less than 23 journalists have been arrested in Iran in the week following the elections, making Iran one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. Online activists are trying to counter this trend by giving advice for helping Iranian protesters. One problem is that Iranian leaders are trying to delegitimize the reform movement by pretending that the reformers are puppets of foreign powers, so special discretion is required for anyone wanting to help the Iranian people."

Comments

Surprised

[diskofish]

Honestly, I was surprised the backlash against this didn't happen sooner. I guess this just confirms western fears that the elections in Iran were indeed a farce.

Re:Surprised

[GodfatherofSoul]

I'm surprised that it hasn't been worse. The Grand Ayatollah basically dared the protesters to call his bluff when he threatened them, then he didn't do much to stop them afterwards. A-hole Oppressive Authoritarianism 101 says you crack down hard and fast. Now, the protesters have had a taste of victory and the leadership looks weak.

Re:Surprised

[AKAImBatman]

The Iranian government was hoping to quietly sweep the issue under the rug. The Guardian Council's statement that they would look into possible election fraud was nothing more than a delay tactic. The Council had hoped that the public would wait for the result quietly. Then when the Council made their determination, the people would have cooled off and the whole matter would be swept under the rug.

Of course, it didn't work that way. The Iranian public has been getting progressively angrier. These stalling tactics only made them madder. The Ayatollah's proclamation of "divine insight" into the election made them angrier still. Even the blood shed on the street has not discouraged them, but thrown them into a shear rage.

Now Iran is staring down a full-blown revolution. The police have been told they can use firearms (as if they haven't been using them) and the protesters have been denounced as terrorists.

A lot of blood is going to be shed in the next few days. And the press just happens to be considered a fair target by the Iranian government. :-(

Re:Surprised

[Rogerborg]

this just confirms western fears that the elections in Iran were indeed a farce

What a curious way to look at it. Here I was thinking that what the West feared was the result, not the method of arriving at it.

If the moderate liberals succeed in seizing power (nobody laugh), will the West fear them as well just because "the elections were a farce"?

Re:Surprised

[CrashPoint]

I don't think anyone outside of Iran knows the truth.

Hell, I doubt many people inside Iran know the truth.

Re:Surprised

[MightyMartian]

The problem here is that there are deep divisions among the various factions that control Iran. Khamenei is, at least on paper, the most powerful person in Iran, but he ultimately does have to answer to the Assembly of Experts. The Assembly of Experts is lead by Khamenei's chief rival; Rafsanjani. It appears that, whatever the goals of the protesters, it really is about Rafsanjani and the other commercial elites, who stand to benefit from opening up to the West, taking on Khamenei and his faction, who are decidedly anti-Western and totally anti-American.

You can see this secret dance in odd ways; Khamenei's fawning words about Rafsanjani's, the unwillingness of Khamenei to go completely Tienanmen on the protesters (which may suggest deep divisions in the Guardian Council). Khamenei clearly thinks he is vulnerable and has to walk a fine line. Still, by arresting Rafsanjani's kids and making only slightly veiled threats against Moussavi he's trying to send the message that he still holds a lot of cards, which of course he does.

I think the news, such as we're getting, suggests the protests are petering out. But the cat is out of the bag now. Khamenei's authority has been undermined.

Re:Surprised

[SatanicPuppy]

I don't think anyone inside Iran knows the truth either. You may not "trust journalism" whatever that means, but our journalism, with all of its flaws is far better at disseminating accurate information than anything they have inside Iran at the best of times, and these aren't the best of times.

The people in Iran are hearing little besides rumor, propaganda, and sermons.

Re:Surprised

[hot soldering iron]

That's remarkably shortsighted of YOU to think that they want, need, or care about a "voter base". They are warlords, and will stay in power as long as they can using lies, violence, corruption, or rigged elections. Besides any old-school Chicago politician knows that just because someone is dead doesn't mean they can't vote!

Re:Surprised

[demachina]

"specifically the 1972 revolution"

I think the Iranian revolution you must be referring to was in 1978/1979.

"then send them almost naked and unarmed into a minefield to clear a path for soldiers."

Many of these "children" were members of the Basij. Its a little simplistic to portray the people who join the Basij as not know what they were doing. They new about as well as anyone who joins a fanatical, fundamentalist organization, whether it be the Basij or the Taliban. Ahmandinejad came out of the Basij too. Its a little misleading to lay the misuse of martyrdom on just the current Iranian regime. Martrydom is an integral part of Islam and a number of other religions and social movements. It was integral to Japanese culture as well. The same thing happens many other places including the 9/11 hijackers and human wave attacks by the Japanese in World War II. I think I would blame the ability of organized religions to manipulate people in to doing really stupid things, and that problem is not specific to Iran, Iran's current regime, nor is it specific to Islam. America has used religion throughout its history to encourage people to get killed in wars too.

I'm not entirely sure of the dates but I think Moussavi, the current champion of democracy and freedom in Iran today was, was in the 1980's, the Prime Minister of the Iran during part of the Iran Iraq war. I'm not positive but there is a pretty fair chance he was complicit in the human wave attacks as much as the rest of the Iranian regime you are railing against.

The Iranian human wave attacks really aren't much different than Pickett's charge at Gettysberg and pretty much every offensive waged in World War I by the French, Germans, British, Russians and Americans. The death toll in World War I far surpassed 500 thousand. They killed that many young men in a few days. In World War I the solders might have been slightly older, and packing rifles, but they were slaughtered in exactly the same way by machine guns, artillery and mustard gas and the fact the were carrying rifles was usually pretty irrelevant. Most of them had been told by their ministers and rabbi's that heaven awaited if they didn't make it, which most of them didn't. Its a shameless ploy of most nation states and organized religions to use the promise of an after life to get soldiers to throw away the life they have in wars.

The Iranian human wave attacks certainly were brutal but you are also somewhat over the top in how you are using it for propaganda purposes against the current regime. Iran was fighting a war against Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Iraq was getting a LOT of military aid from the U.S. and Britain in particular while Iran was mostly being embargoed. Iraq had vastly superior weaponry as a result and the west was also encouraging Saddam to use chemical weapons against the Iranians. One of Iran's few assets is it had more people, so use of human wave attacks may be the only thing that kept them from losing the war against Iraq. Pretty much all they did was sacrifice poorly trained, poorly equipped soldiers to clear the way for their experienced soldiers, it was brutal, but they were desperate, it did work, it isn't the first time it was done nor was it the last. All war is brutal, nit picking the details like you are doing for propaganda purposes is pretty transparent and shameless. The Allies intentionally killed millions of civilians, including women and children, in Germany and Japan through strategic bombing and no one seems to bat an eye about that, and in a lot of ways that was much worse.

Probably just as bad as the Iranian human waves was for the U.S. and Britain to arm Saddam, encourage him to attack his neighbors(Iran) and encourage him to use weapons of mass destruction against them one decade and then wage two wars against him in each of the next two decades for attacking his neighbors(this time Kuwait) and using WMD's this time against the Kurds. It was the height of hypocrisy. The U.S. and Britain were just goading Arabs in to killing each other to gain their strategic goals, mostly control of Middle Eastern oil.

Marg bar Diktator!

[LaminatorX]

The regime seems to be fighting the last media war. They've been very effective in deporting and isolating professionals, only to discover how irrelevant that is when thousands of phone-cams are in the streets. Their attempts at jamming and filtering have clearly been quite porous. There's no such thing as a media blackout once word of mouth goes world wide.

Standing up

[phrostie]

My heart goes out to the Iranian people, but this is something they have to do for themselves.
their governement has to learn to respect the people they govern. as one post i read had stated, "we've traded one dictatorship for another".

if we in the west get involved there will always be accusations of puppets and strings.
the only way for the Iranian people to earn the respect of those that run the country and the other countries of the region is to do this on their own.

the worst is yet to come, but i wish them all the courage and strength they may need.

Re:Standing up

[BlueKitties]

Damn straight! These folks descend from the Persians, I know they have what it takes to hold their own. If other countries step in, it will only lead to propaganda. At this point, all we can do is watch and cheer. May the force be with you, Iranians.

Re:Standing up

[Dragoness Eclectic]

Where are you getting your historical and religious info, Chick Tracts?

You seem to be confusing the words "massacre" and "conquest". Mohammed's Arabs conquered their neighbors and converted them to Islam; they didn't exterminate them. Arabs have been raiding their neighbors since the dawn of history, and moving in and taking over when their civilized neighbors were weak--study the history of ancient Iraq/Mesopotamia some time. They tended to get assimilated by the vastly larger civilized populations they ruled, not massacred.

The Mongols and the Turks coming off the steppes were the ones that exterminated whole populations, and that was centuries after the original Arab conquest. The steppe nomads weren't having any of that assimilation stuff, so they wiped out everyone who wasn't an ignorant peasant. The Ottoman conquest of the Middle East set civilization in Mesopotamia back by centuries; it still hasn't recovered.

By the way, most places the moslems are natives; they converted to Islam via conquest or trade. Persians are not Arabs, and calling them Arabs is a good way to insult them.

Re:Foreign Influence in Iran Protests is Real

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

Whether there are only "a few differences on paper but little substantial difference" between Ahmadinejad and Moussavi, that is not the point. The point is that the election was rigged. The fact that the mullahs felt the need to rig an election where both front-runners only have "a few differences on paper, but little substantial difference," speaks volumes about how much "dissent" will be tolerated by the Ayatollacrats.

Best,

You got to hand it to them

[Chrisq]

In some countries the people would just give in when an unelected legislature tries to overturn a majority decision.

Re:You got to hand it to them

[ScentCone]

The point is that the Supreme Court cancelled the recount of the Florida election results, effectively appointing George W. Bush president. Why didn't they allow the recount to finish?

Ah, so you preferred the method that Gore's lawyers wanted, and which the left-leaning courts in Florida initially backed: partial recounts, only in those voting districts hand-picked by Gore's team to increase the odds of improving his count. The Supreme Court weighed in on the fact that the standards being used to handle those recounts weren't consistent, and weren't in keeping with the constitutional concept of equal protection. You'll note that Gore's team vigrousoy opposed a state-wide recount (becuase they didn't want that - it would have been to their disadvantage, and they knew it).

And of course, you're surely aware that in the weeks following the ruling, every vote was recounted by several teams of people, using every standard advocated by either candidate, and several others, as well. In each recount, regardless of the technique used, Gore lost in Florida. Not to bother you with the facts or anything.

The Supreme Court didn't stop "the recount," they stopped a capricious, moving-target, standards-less partial recount of one candidate's hand-picked districts that was handling one voter's hanging chad different than another voter's from a different zip code. It took the follow-up state-wide recounts done by journalists and researchers months to finish, but the results were as expected and as first (and repeatedly) certificed by the Florida board of elections: Gore lost no matter how you looked at the numbers. To say nothing of the large number of military votes (from Floridians, those are usually not left-leaning) that never even made it into the mix.

Of course, you already knew all of this. Nice troll, though!

How do we know?

[drDugan]

Frankly I think most observers have extremely little information about what is real and reliable half way around the world.

The most reliable things I've seen so far are the large events, and the events reported independently in a similar way by several different sources: there was an election, it has led to unrest. One group in power is now in rising conflict with another group that wants power. Several people have died. Really beyond that, assertions of any particular thing day-to-day are pretty unreliable for me, and I've been reading and following this pretty closely.

As to whether a foreign power is involved, I think that is an extremely difficult question to answer as a remote consumer of "news" and Internet reports. Any group or nation powerful enough to be involved inside Iran now would have as a prerequisite the ability to control tightly the access and dissemination of information internally and the stories released to the public, plus would probably have a desire for secrecy regarding their involvement.

Given recent history of multiple invasions in the region, the high value of resources in the region, plus historical precedent for outside regime support (specifically in Iran) - on what basis of reliable fact does one base the conclusion of foreign involvement or non involvement in the current demonstrations and issues in Iran? What do you consider to be the most reliable sources in the current fog of conflict and disinformation? Twitter? Some random Blogger? CNN? Your government? People you know personally?

My only point is this: Even if there were outside groups directly influencing events, how would people know about it? I don't think they would.

Re:The Grotesquely Ugly Truth

[MightyMartian]

That really is a load of crap. In the 1950s, Iran was well on its way to becoming probably the most secular society in the Middle East. It had a burgeoning middle class, and seemed to be moving away from authoritarianism. And then the Americans and the Brits, not liking the nationalization of oil by Mohammad Mosaddeq, helped the Shah to overthrow that government. That created the deep divide between Iran and the US and Great Britain, and it didn't help that the Shah became a ruthless, Western-backed dictator.

I doubt a lot of the Iranians who supported Ayatollah Khomeini did it because they wanted to replace the Shah's oppressive regime with a fundamentalist Islamic regime just as oppressive. They wanted the Shah out and flocked to those who seemed capable of a leadership position. Was it a mistake? Probably, but if there's still lingering distrust of the United States, it's hardly because Iranians are somehow culturally more likely to live willingly under dictators (which I don't buy, it doesn't really reflect where Iranian culture was going for the first part of the 20th century). It's because the US, shortsightedly, opted for a man they viewed as a friend as opposed to a man they viewed as an opponent who threatened both key oil reserves and who (in they're view) might be more prone to siding with the Soviets.

Re:American Hypocrasy

[Colonel Korn]

I find it amazing that this much of a stink wasn't made during the Zimbabwean elections...where anti mugabe supporters were being raped and murdered by the thousands Then again, I guess there are no economic interests in that part of Africa, like there are in Iran (read: oil)

I praise the internet for being able to illuminate to us all, the double speak and forked tounge of the supposed 'freedom force (or farce rather)' known as America.

Hypocritical Liars.

My main source of news about the elections in both Iran and Zimbabwe was national public radio, which is about as American as you can get. NPR made a big point about exposing the massive corruption and manipulation of the election in Zimbabwe, and with Iran it is taking a very different path, pointing out that there are allegations of fraud but that the only verifiable story so far is the unrest in Iran itself. The difference in coverage is quite appropriate for the differences in context.

America is many things, but above all else it's diverse. It's not accurate to characterize all Americans of sharing a single interest or world view.

Re:dictatorships, cartels, democracy

[zindorsky]

When you have a good dictator, things are generally pretty
good. The trick is to avoid the bad dictator.

That is indeed the trick. The fact is, the harm that bad dictators cause greatly outweighs any good that "good" dictators provide. And a dictator system, once in place, is very hard to get rid of.

Also, I feel suspicious of the idea that there are "good" dictators. Some may start out good, but power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Re:dictatorships, cartels, democracy

[guruevi]

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I have worked for small companies with a tight-fisted CEO as you describe (as most dotcom's were) who didn't have to answer to nobody and the results were disastrous. You get somebody with a business degree filtering all decisions through him resulting in horrendous long meetings where you have to educate a CEO about your technical systems and issues and all-in-all the customer gets to be put on the back burner and the company fails. Look at Cuba under Fidel for a dictator that rules like that.

The more moderate CEO has to report to the board or to somebody else (shareholders), usually has CxO's that cooperate but do not report directly to him. It's more of a democracy by the oligarchy (like Iran). Ahmed is just a sock puppet of the religious oligarchy and is there for PR purposes. The other one however threatens the current ruling class since the other one wants to be more liberal and have less to do with the higher ups (kinda like a CEO wanting to buy out the company) - that's why he 'lost'.

Eventually Iran is going to get sick of it (either now or next election) and their religious class will have to step down (probably at the hands of a bloody revolution) - I would say all of the countries where currently religious entities (including leaders and followers) have most of the (elective) power will eventually get 'liberated' by the incoming younger generation and there are going to be some big changes. Similar to the US - the younger generation keeps getting disenfranchised by the religious 'old & faithful' voting for the same party (The Republicrat party) - eventually (I would say within the next 3-5 elections) there will be a shift to something else.

Re:What does it take to topple regime?

[sribe]

...nobody missed three meals during the Great Depression...

Bullshit. People on the Western Plains starved to death.

Re:Warsaw Pact vs. Iranian Despot

[MightyMartian]

Whatever the truth of cultural differences, the reality is that the claims that Mosaddeq was going to cut a deal with the Russians was a smokescreen, a complete pile of B.S. concocted by the Brits and the Americans to give some justification to turfing a guy who was clearly trying to break Iran free from both Western subservience and trying to give more weight to the democratic institutions than to the Shah.

None of this history is very much disputed any more. The CIA, with Eisenhower's approval, helped the Shah overthrow Mosaddeq's government in return for allowing foreign oil companies to gain valuable contracts to extract Iranian oil.

You need to read up on Anglo-Iranian Oil Company here. The coup d'etat that ousted Mosaddeq had nothing to do with differing cultures or with the fear of the growth of the Soviet sphere, and everything to do with the Brits being really pissed off that Mosaddeq had nationalized their oil company, and the Americans lending a helping hand and trying to firm up their control over the Shah, who they viewed as a chief ally in the Middle East and Central Asia. It was a shortsighted policy that ended in absolute disaster.

Re:I'm sure Hitler killed more

[Anonymous Coward]

YAY! Liberal American Moral Relativism to the rescue! Lets show that an act of war 65 years ago gives us no moral standing to criticize the modern crushing of dissent by a government against its own citizens! For our next trick, we'll equate Guantanamo bay with Auschwitz!

Re:I'm sure Hitler killed more

[StikyPad]

Well, to be fair, wrong is wrong. Guantanamo might not be "as wrong" as Auschwitz, but it's still wrong, and pointing out worse crimes doesn't lessen the culpability.

That said, yeah, if we wait for someone without sin to cast stones, we'll be waiting a long time. Just because we've made mistakes doesn't mean we have to ignore injustice when we see it. On the contrary, we should condemn the actions of Iran just as we condemn detentions in Guantanamo, the use of atomic weapons, slavery, or anything else we've fucked up.