International Association of Iranian Journalists in an open letter to American journalists demanded them to ask Ahmadinejad(Why are Iranian journalists in prison and banned from writing?)
Here is this letter:
Editors, reporters, journalists and writers in the United States,
The International Association of Iranian Journalists (IAIJ) calls for help in freeing your Iranian colleagues.
Dear Fellow Journalists,
As you are aware, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , after the controversial and disputed presidential elections is again on his way to the United States.
Like previous years and visits, this illegal president of the Islamic Republic will meet members of the American media and like in the past will claim that Iran is the freest country in the world. He will again deny that there are human rights violations, censorship of the media, and suppression of freedoms in Iran.
As journalists, we would like to inform you once again that Iran is the largest prison for journalists in the world. Today, there are
some 18 Iranian journalists behind prison bars. In the most recent attack on journalists, a woman web-blogger received 50 flogging lashes as punishment for criticizing Ahmadinejad’s policies. This journalist and blogger was flogged simply because she was doing what all her journalistic colleagues are supposed to do around the world: reporting news and life around her.
The judiciary-security apparatus of the Islamic Republic of Iran has arrested these journalists, reporters, bloggers and writers and, after repeated tortures and confinements to solitary cells, has sentenced them to long prison terms and/or banned them from using their pens altogether.
Banning professionals from media activities is a new policy of the judiciary officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has expanded over the last 2 years. The ban imposed on Ahmad Zeidabadi to engage in media activities for life, on Jhila Bani-Yaghoob for 30 years, on Badrol Sadat Mofidi for 5 years and on Massoud Lavasani for 10 years are only a few examples of such sentences passed against Iranian journalists.
Iranian journalists currently face the most dreadful conditions in Iranian prisons. They are even denied the rights that other prisoners enjoy for which they have resorted to hunger strikes on
numerous times. Hoda Saber, a journalist and human rights activist, was the latest victim of such persecution who resorted to a hunger strike in. Unfortunately he lost that battle and her life because of disregard for his calls by prison officials.
Dear Fellow Journalists,
Please ask Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this question:
-Why are these journalists in prison?
We earnestly call on you to unanimously ask him to free your fellow journalists in Iran from prison.