Informed 12 International
Plea for a safer world for journalists
Te UN is told about the threats to BBC Persian staff, Tim Dawson reports on a heartfelt speech
Hundreds of diplomats packed the concentric horseshoe desks that accommodate the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. Some pressed translation earpieces to their heads, others scribbled furiously. Colour from the kaleidoscopic ceiling sculpture infused the room. BBC Persian Service journalist Parizad Nobakht took the floor. If she felt nervous, it didn’t show. “Our experience shows that Iran is not
content with targeting and silencing our colleagues inside of Iran,” she told the diplomats. “Iran has been engaging in transnational repression to target and harass Iranian journalists in exile, including at the BBC, to seek to censor independent reporting on Iran. For the people of Iran, it is the work of Iranian journalists in exile – supposedly beyond the reach of Iran’s censorship and harassment – that provides them the news they need. But for those of us working in exile, we are not immune.”
Death threats She said that the Iranian government had labelled her and her colleagues ‘terrorists’, issued death threats, persecuted their families in Iran and elsewhere in Europe, and mounted campaigns of online harassment.
Nobakht concluded: “We urge this council to condemn Iran’s actions in the strongest terms. Iran must stop targeting journalists. Journalism is not a crime.” Her personal moto is “Be the change you want to see in the world” – and it was inspiring to see her doing just that on such a stage. Te issue she highlighted, however, is one that appears to be worsening by the day – transnational repression, or the state
harassment of journalists beyond their own borders.
Jamal Khashoggi and Pouria Zeraati
Te murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul in 2018 has lost none of its grotesque potency. Nor has the stabbing of Iran International’s journalist, Pouria Zeraati, in London earlier this year. But dramatic headlines easily obscure the daily harassment felt by hundreds of international reporters, and not all of them emanate from Iran. Geting the granular detail of this under the noses of diplomats can make a profound difference. It is their dispatches to government ministers that fill the famous “red boxes” (and their equivalents elsewhere in the world). Nobakht’s testimony should now be put
before the new teams at the UK’s Home and Foreign Offices and is why the UK’s National Action Plan for the Safety of Journalists must include robust action.
Assange freed
By chance, as Nobakht boarded her flight to Geneva, seemingly unrelated events in south London would significantly impact the likely effectiveness of western governments intervening in support of journalistic freedom. Julian Assange leſt HMP Belmarsh and started his long journey to accept a plea deal, and a new life in Australia.
During the five years that the Wikileaks founder spent in a British jail, among his most surprising cheerleaders has been Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov. Whenever Lavrov was questioned about Russia’s actions – the death of Alexi Navalny, or the imprisonment of Evan Gershkovich, for example, he had a stock reply – to accuse his questioners of double standards and raise the case of Assange.
Te plea deal is not perfect, but
it removes a running sore that has critically undermined US and UK efforts to present themselves as defenders of media freedom. Hopefully Assange’s release
will diminish the risk of arbitrary prosecution for handling classified documents, with the UK and USA regaining their reputations as defenders of the press. Maybe Nobakht and her colleagues will be among the first beneficiaries.
Tim Dawson
BBC Persian Service journalist Parizad Nobakht tells the UN Human Rights Council about the harassment and threats her colleagues have been subjected to by the Iranian authorities
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12
