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IRAN
BARS HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS AND JOURNALISTS FROM INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL
Iranian authorities have imposed foreign travel bans on at least eight human
rights activists and journalists in recent months, preventing them from
expressing their views at international conferences, reports Human Rights Watch.
The most recent case occurred on 4 February 2007, when Hashim Aghajari and
Abdullah Momeni were prevented from boarding a plane to Boston, where they were
invited to a conference on political reform in Iran at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. Aghajari is a history professor at Tehran's Tarbiat
Modares University, and Momeni is a spokesman for an organisation of former
student activists. Officials from the Information Ministry confiscated their
passports and told them that the Revolutionary Court had imposed a travel ban on
them.
In another incident, authorities detained Mansoureh Shojai, Sadigheh Tal'at
Taghinia and Farnaz Seifi, three women's rights activists and journalists, as
they were preparing to board a plane to attend a journalism workshop in India on
27 January. Security forces then searched the women's homes and confiscated
their personal belongings, including mobile phones, computers, books and notes.
The women were taken to Tehran's Evin prison and interrogated. On 28 January,
they were charged with "acting against national security" and released on bail.
On 13 January, security forces at the airport prevented Taghi Rahmani, a writer
and civil society activist, from boarding an airplane to Denmark, where the PEN
Association of Denmark had invited him to deliver a series of lectures.
Rahmani's passport was taken from him.
Other human rights activists and journalists who have been banned from traveling
abroad include women's rights activist Sussan Tahmasebi and Ali Farahbakhsh, a
journalist and economist who is being held at Evin prison.
Over the past year, several other prominent human rights activists and writers
have been barred, including Issa Saharkhiz, Emad Baghi, Fatimeh Govarai and
Ahmad Ghabel.
Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF) adds that 21 Iranian
journalists were detained at Tehran airport last November after returning from a
training course in the Netherlands. They were questioned for several hours and
their computers, notebooks and other material were confiscated.
Iranian law only permits foreign travel bans after a court order has been issued
against a person who has been formally accused of criminal offenses, says Human
Rights Watch. However, none of the activists and journalists subjected to the
travel bans have been charged with a criminal offense.
Since the election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, the
situation for Iranian writers has worsened, Human Rights Watch says. Authorities
systematically suppress freedom of expression and opinion by closing newspapers
and imprisoning journalists and editors. The few independent dailies that remain
are heavily self-censored. Many writers and intellectuals have left the country,
are in prison, or have ceased to criticize the government in their writings.
With the country's press tightly controlled by Iranian authorities, the struggle
for free expression in Iran is increasingly taking place on the Internet, a
highly popular medium for accessing information and voicing criticisms of the
government. However, those who take risks and challenge the status quo are
harshly penalized. Since 2003, 28 bloggers and online journalists have been
imprisoned, according to ARTICLE 19, and evidence suggests that self-censorship
is also growing among Internet users.
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