Tehran Emrooz newspaper was suspended by the Press Oversight Committee of Iran’s ministry of Islamic guidance that monitors the media and issues their licenses, Fars News Agency reported.News of Tehran Emrooz’s suspension was announced after the daily published a 16-page special issue on June 24 (third anniversary of Ahmadinejad’s election to presidency), criticizing the ninth administration’s economic, cultural and political policies.
Tehran Emrooz’s special issue, which was published as an attachment to the 443rd issue of the daily and paved the way for the daily’s suspension, contained a front-page article titled, “No Money in Years of Abundance of Cash.” In another article titled, “I and Mafia,” the daily examined Ahmadinejad’s accusations against economic profiteers and concluded that the accusations were voiced to acquit the government of responsibility and, are baseless and unfounded.
In another article titled, “Favor for Others,” the paper criticized the ninth administration’s posture on the Holocaust and argued that the policies harm the nation.
An interview with Hassan Sobhani, a long-serving Majlis assembly representative and member of the Majlis Economic Committee was among the pieces in the special report. The piece was titled, “We Sell Wealth, And Remain Poor.”
But the article titled, “Ahmadinejad’s Souvenirs in the Capital,” was among the special issue’s most critical pieces. It examined issues such as Tehran municipality’s “350 billion Toman expenditure without adequate financial receipts,” “expenditure of city of Tehran’s budget on wedding ceremonies,” “municipality’s cultural and artistic organization’s record-breaking financial irregularities,” “Monorail as the symbol of Ahmadinejad’s management of municipality,” and “fate of souvenirs, fate-shaping souvenirs.”
The last report in the special issue dealt with the conditions of 12 officials in the ninth administration, referring to them as “these few people, men fitting two administrations.” ”These few people” was the title of a television show that was broadcasted a few years ago and revolved around stories of three incompetent people.
The twelve officials included were “Mojtaba Hashemi Samareh, Ali Saeedloo, Rahim Mashai, Sadegh Mahsouli, Gholamhossein Elham, Mehrdad Bazrpash, Masoud Zaribafan, Morteza Agha Tehrani, Mohammad Ali Ramin, Mehdi Kalhor, Davoud Ahmadinejad, and Ali Akbar Javanfekr.”
News of Tehran Emrooz’s suspension was reported on Saturday even though the Press Oversight Committee meets on Mondays only. Tehran Emrooz newspaper was set up by the group that headed the current mayor of Tehran Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf’s 2005 presidential bid (against Ahmadinejad). The newspaper’s reports often glorified Qalibaf’s management in driving urban development in Tehran. The paper also supported Qalibaf’s candidacy during the third Tehran city council and eighth Majlis elections.
One of the paper’s major projects is to support Qalibaf in the tenth presidential elections coming up in 2009.
Amin Sarbandi
Rooz
What we have said here is only a brief listing of academic violations and denial of right to education in Iranian universities today. Students are determined to continue their legal and rightful struggle to promote independence of universities and uphold academic freedoms, although many are sacrificed down this path.
Iran is a state party to both the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (without reservation) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), both of which prohibit the execution of persons under the age of 18 at the time of their offense. In ratifying the CRC, Iran declared an extremely broad reservation, “not to apply any provisions or articles of the Convention that are incompatible with Islamic Laws.”
one must not forget that one aspect of “security” cases is the image that they carry for the groups that advance such issues. Therefore, before fake charges take to the news-media and become public, those who have had a hand in arresting the students must be weakened. Otherwise, after the severe charges are made public, repeated and are tied to the image of the actors, even the intervention of the head of the judiciary (as history demonstrates) cannot be of much help to the detainees.
How can we tell the judiciary officials of Iran that according to law juveniles can stay alive and continue to live with appropriate and suitable punishment? How must one make this request from the judiciary a public and wide-spread demand and point out that killing a juvenile who has not wholeheartedly committed an act does not solve any of the real problems facing the country?
Thousands of university students in an Iranian city have held a protest against the attempted sexual harassment of a female colleague by a top university official, the press reported on Monday. About 3,000 students at the university in the northwestern city of Zanjan staged the sit-in protest over the weekend at a sports hall on campus, the reports said.
