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Post-Revolutionary Reinstallation of Censorship
The continuation of the process of reform in contemporary Iran depends on finding a space for criticism in the country’s new political culture. Critical thinking has been the cornerstone of modernity. As such, a fundamental priority for cultural life of Iran remains the acceptance of a healthy tradition of criticism. For a nation with little official appreciation for such tradition, however, achieving this end is neither easy nor without conflicts.
The fight against suppression of ideas and censorship was among the main concerns of the uprising that led to the 1979 revolution. In the course of the revolutionary months that led to the fall of the monarchy, the pre-revolutionary censorship apparatus lost its vehemence and withdrew from public life. The freedom of publication, which had come about several months prior to the Islamic revolution, continued for a couple of years. Then, in 1981, a reversal began and the system of post-revolutionary censorship as we know it today came into being.
In 1981, when the Islamic Republic was both involved in conflict with opponents at home and embroiled in a war with Iraq, the government ordered the withdrawal of books containing the ideas of groups who opposed the Islamic regime. Such books had found their way to bookshops in the open political air of the revolutionary months. From then on, censorship assumed a form that was tied to the conditions of the wartime economy. Publication of any book was dependent on the supply of paper, which was in turn authorized solely by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. At that stage, the publisher or author had to submit the text of the book to one of the departments of the ministry and wait between three to six months to gain approval of the content—or not. If approved, the ministry would authorize the supply of print paper; otherwise it would be impossible to publish the book. Even publishers who were in line with the ideologies of the authorities were not able to publish more than one or two titles a year. This type of censorship also applied to newspapers and magazines, with the difference that if a paper followed a line that did not conform to the official taste or tried to act as a tribune for people whose ideas differed from those of the authorities in any field, it faced a reduction in its newsprint quota (for instance to half) or, alternatively, a complete stoppage of official supply.
As a result, the only way for the print media to survive was to abide by governmental directives and print only the materials written by “insider” (khodi) authors. The procedure for gaining permission to continue the publication of a newspaper or magazine was also interesting. A newspaper or magazine had to apply for paper for each individual issue and the authorities made decisions on the basis of contents. If the contents of previous issues, which had somehow escaped inspection, displeased the authorities, the publication would face a reduction in future paper quota. During these years, the country witnessed the closure of magazines such as the Ayandegan, which had a large readership and reflected a diversity of ideas. Other magazines and newspapers airing the views of any political group and party, even pro-revolutionary ones, which were at variance with the views of those who had come to dominate the government were closed one after the other and their publishers or distributors were punished by the order of revolutionary prosecutors. Included in the list of closed papers were Mardom, belonging to the Iranian Tudeh (communist) party, and Enghelab-e Eslami, which belonged to the first president of the Islamic Republic Bani Sadr before he was banished from power. What remained were a number of state-owned newspapers such as Kayhan and Ettela’at, and Jomhouri Eslami, which was the organ of the Islamic Republican Party –the only political party allowed to operate at the time. Bearing in mind the fact that the Islamic Republic’s radio and television are wholly under state monopoly, it can be said that during this period of war, the media in Iran followed only the views and ideas of the state. Not surprisingly, this kind of censorship impeded freedom of thought in Iran and proved an obstacle to the realization of the rights of citizenship. Those who refused to adopt self-censorship were driven out of the public sphere.
This wartime censorship system continued to the end of the war in 1987, though the end of the war did not mark an end to censorship. In fact, the censor system fell into the hands of a group of people who were not as fundamental as those during the war time, some of whom were bent on the elimination of those identified as “liberals” or free thinkers whose ideas did not conform fully to those of the state. This group of powerful people pursued the objective of removing independent thought from the cultural and political arena. When the war ended, the previous restrictions on the import and distribution of paper could no longer be justified. The role of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance was re-defined on paper as simply issuing guidance rather than controlling the media. It seemed that the situation was moving in the right direction though soon thereafter, different signs appeared on the horizon. A number of books were confiscated, the bookshop Morgh-e Amin was set afire by Islamic vigilantes, and the well-known female writer Shahrnush Parsipur was arrested for her book Women without Men.
Interestingly, until this time in the history of the Islamic Republic, there was no specific legal directive that detailed what could and what could not be published. But in 1987, the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution issued a directive to publishers as a means of bringing back systematic censorship. The directive contained a list of rules that publishers were now obliged to follow. Despite this fundamental change, many experts believe that the directive does not in itself constitute a legal foundation for control and censorship of books before they are published because no such laws have been legislated so far. Thus, the decision of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to set up a special book control section to decide on the contents of books was, strictly speaking, illegal.
With the birth of the reform movement the situation changed somewhat, though not necessarily always in the direction of greater freedom of expression. Since 1997, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance was less of a force in preventing books, newspapers, and journals from being published. In fact, the ministry issued many more licenses for newspapers and magazines. All the same, freedom of expression in the publishing sector remained quite restricted due to the increased activism of the judiciary, now fully controlled by opponents of reform under president Ahmadinejad. This is why in some instances press and political offenses, which according to the constitution must be tried in ordinary courts and before a jury, have been brought before Revolutionary Courts or the Special Court for Clergy. In many of these cases, the offenders have been tried and sentenced in camera without a jury. The Revolutionary Courts have taken it upon themselves to prosecute the press for allegations such as insulting the sacred, propagation of ideas against the Islamic Republic, or creation of mistrust in the public mind. Such an approach to the intellectual and political aspects of life in Iran has had serious consequences, including the suspension or withdrawal of publication licenses. The number of newspapers and magazines that have met such a fate since 1999, otherwise known as the reform period, are quite considerable. Many editors, license holders and writers have been put in prison, let out on hefty bails, to finally receive heavy prison sentences. The situation is further complicated by the fact that the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance no longer investigate the press before publication and it is upon the appearance of the newspaper or the magazine that the iron fist of censorship comes down via the judiciary. The result is that those active in the publishing world must work under constant fear and, if failing to enforce strict self-censorship, face trial and punishment. Presently, few reformists are successful in surviving in the reformist press, parties and NGOs, yet they face detention and unfair trials, and in general lack judicial security. Of course in comparison to the seculars, the reformists fare much better since the seculars don’t even have the smallest legal opportunity for organizing and expressing their political opinion.
Further, those in the media who tried to use unofficial channels of communication to inform society were subject to assaults by so-called pressure groups, collections of individuals devoted to the elimination of cultural activities and at times physical removal of individuals holding unorthodox viewpoints. Even though these groups did not operate in a clandestine manner, the legal authorities refused to deal with them or prevent their violent activities against persons they deemed to be opponents of the Islamic Republic. As a result, the belief that they were under the financial and legal protection of persons in authority gained currency. Currently, fundamentalist president Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad, who aims to uproot all the achievements of the reformists government and in particular suffocate the weak civil society, granted the Minister of Islamic Culture and Guidance of his cabinet, Mr. Saffar Harandi, extensive control to intensify censorship in the fields of press, publication, cinema and theater and on whole the entire creative realm that requires freedom of speech for its growth. A similar role is also given to his Minister of Interior, Mr. Pourmohammadi, to crush any form of peaceful gathering and unleash the police force under the order of the Ministry of Interior on the peacefully demonstrating workers, women, youth, and others. With the same goal, the Minister of Science and the Minister of Intelligence of Ahmadinezhad’s government, simultaneously crushed students active in the student run press as well as any forms of academic freedom. Their main goal is to once and for all destroy the young sprout of reformism that has not yet come to fruition. Of course they will not succeed and new faces will emerge from within these oppressions to exert change on the political situation of the country. Young leaders will surface to accomplish great changes.
The ideology of these groups is not difficult to describe. They voice an opposition to individual and social freedom, hatred of democracy, rejection of any system of checks and balances to control top-ranking authorities, opposition to the whole notion of human rights, and opposition to détente in foreign policy. The combination of their influence in the political process and the continued activities of the judiciary against the press has led to the commonly held belief among writers and journalists that, “in present day Iran, there is freedom of expression but not freedom after expression.”
As mentioned above, the survival and even growth of these groups was made possible by non-transparent support from elements within the ruling circles, allowing them to act with impunity. From the time election of President Khatami, they were most active against the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance. The minister (Atta Ullah Mohajerani) was able to bring major changes to the attitudes and policies of that ministry. Among his achievements was the appointment of more lenient censor officers willing to grant licenses to books, films, and other cultural products that were previously banned. But throughout his term of office at the ministry, he was never free from the pressure exerted by groups within and without the formal state apparatus. He faced and survived a vote of no confidence by the Fifth Majles in 1999, but was finally forced to resign in the winter of 2000. His resignation and the fact that the president accepted it, was a clear manifestation of the power of the pressure groups.
These groups, who are ruling the government now, were intolerant of any change in the cultural environment of the country. They were devoted to anachronistic prejudices and as soon as they felt the environment was permitting the presence of fresh and creative minds, they found their own survival at risk. Behruz Afkhami, a filmmaker who entered the Sixth Majles (reformist parliament between the years 2000 – 2004) on a reformist ticket, spoke about the impact of pressure groups in a parliamentary speech on 30 December 2000. The speech is an important one and parts of it are worth quoting in order to understand the general cultural atmosphere in Iran as impacted by the activities of pressure groups:
Even though during last year, the activities of the Ministry of Culture and Guidance included a series of passive retreats in the area of cultural reforms, we must admit that the resignation of the minister was a great victory for the pressure groups and self-willed circles which during the past ten years have been compelling our leaders and decision makers in the government to put the maximum pressure on the life and activities of artists, intellectuals and any one concerned with the cultural life of the people... Ten years ago (when the last national census was taken), we had a population of about 55 million people of whom 25 million were aged under 15 and 40 million were under 30 years. We have one of the youngest populations in the world whose free time amounts to 600 million hours a day and 220 million hours a year. ... Meanwhile, there were talks of the arrival of the satellite receiver, compact disks and Internet and it was obvious that America was preparing for a global assault to capture the free times of everyone in the world. ... We knew that to resist the conquest of the cultural field of Iran by America, it is necessary to create the essential legal, economic and industrial infrastructure to support the growth and development of cultural and artistic products. We knew that censorship should be minimized and should be regulated in order to persuade artists and creators of cultural works to produce quality products. We knew that we needed the production of over 200 films a year and construction of over 2000 cinemas in the country and 10 thousand shops to sell film, cassette tapes and video products. We were aware that if we were not going to leave the free time of our people to the Americans, we needed more than one hundred radio and television stations at the local, provincial, national and even international levels or have to use satellites broadcasting their materials in different languages for different tastes and should even address the Iranians in exile. We knew that we needed one hundred newspapers with circulations of three million copies; we needed 30 thousand new book titles a year and all to preserve the cultural status of the Islamic system... But ten years ago, we also witnessed the first written and mental manifestations of another group, which also made a claim to the leadership of the struggle against cultural invasion. They used simpler methods to achieve their objectives, meaning that when necessary, they resorted to the police and the courts and punishments, and whenever these methods were not available, they concealed the clear signs of the cultural aggression under the carpet or hid their heads in snow. They were also suspicious about any person of intellect and culture except themselves …, and by closely watching artists and people active in the fields of culture; they sought to find signs of cultural aggression. They put the professional record, private and family lives of everyone under scrutiny and delved into the files of their friends until they finally found some recriminating evidence. What they never needed was law and order and security of investment for the expansion of the cultural and artistic infrastructure of the country; they did not mind if the remaining few cinemas of the country were left empty and the number of book copies in a country of 55 million people fell to the shameful low of 300,000. Thus, confronting cultural invasion progressed rapidly and, with the intervention of more extremist elements, rose to a new height with the physical elimination of opposing artists and intellectuals.
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