IFJ worried over media crackdown in Iran

BAGUIO CITY — The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has expressed deep concern over pressure on journalists in Iran who travel overseas and are suspected by their government to be spying.

The IFJ affiliate Association of Iranian Journalists (AIJ) said Iran’s Minister of Information released a statement this week saying the government’s intelligence service had found that the West was recruiting journalists, students and workers to spy by sending them overseas under the guise of research or study.

The AIJ has said this will put more pressure on Iranian journalists, as any foreign trips could make them targets for accusations of spying. "This sort of underhanded pressure from the government of Iran is particularly worrying in light of the recent closures of newspapers and increased crackdown on media," IFJ president Christopher Warren said in a statement sent to news agencies around the world.

The Shargh daily newspaper was reportedly banned on Sept. 11, adding to the ever-increasing list of banned publications in Iran and leaving many journalists jobless, according to the IFJ that claims to represent more than 500,000 journalists in over 115 countries.

The AIJ held a meeting on Sept. 19 protesting the recent closures of newspapers.

"These recent incidents demonstrate Tehran’s distaste for freedom of speech and its unacceptable methods for dealing with independent voices in the media," Warren claimed.

"Media workers all over Iran continue to face strict censorship, intimidation and often imprisonment for nothing more than doing their job," he said.