Ali Hoseini-Khamenei
Ayatollah
Leader of the Islamic Revolution
Pastor Avenue
Tehran
Islamic Republic of Iran
Fax: (011.98.21) 646.4373
Your Excellency:
As Iran’s supreme leader, you bear a heavy burden in your country’s present chaos, and we join the world in hoping that the political turmoil may be peacefully resolved without further damage to Iran’s reputation and respect among the nations of the world.
We write to suggest that whatever the outcome of the current electoral dispute, no good can result to your country from continuing the increasingly heavy-handed repression of journalists who are trying to report these events to the world.
Among specific incidents too numerous to begin to catalog, the Committee to Protect Journalists reports that at least thirteen journalists arrested in the past week remain in custody, including Newsweek correspondent, Maziar Bahari. Many other journalists have gone into hiding to avoid arrest. The BBC’s Tehran bureau chief, Jon Leyne, has been ordered to leave the country, and signals of the BBC and U.S.-backed radio and television stations have been jammed. According to Iranian journalists, security agents are visiting printing houses to censor domestic newspapers. Many other abuses of the press have been reported.
Your Excellency, as events of the past week have amply proved, these efforts to prevent the world from learning what is happening in Iran are futile. It is true that the accounts reaching us are more confused and less professional than our unhindered colleagues would have provided, but the thrust of the protest demonstrations and the government’s brutal efforts to beat them back are plain for the world to see.
By trying to suppress the news, your government merely adds to the impression that it is concealing not just the facts, but its own role in the disputed election. The Overseas Press Club of America, an independent organization that has defended press freedom around the world for seventy years, urges you to end the repression of the independent media and prove to the world that your government has nothing to hide.
Respectfully yours,
Larry Martz
Kevin McDermott
Co-chairmen, Freedom of the Press Committee
cc:
H. E. Mahmud Ahmadinejad
President
Office of the President
Palestine Avenue
Tehran
Islamic Republic of Iran
Fax: (011.98.21) 649.5880/ 646.6415
Ambassador Mohammad Khazai Torshizi
Permanent Representative
Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iranto the United Nations
633 Third Avenue, 34th Floor
New York, NY 10017
Fax: (212) 867.7086
U.S. Interests Section
Embassy of Switzerland
No. 39, Shahid Mousavi (Golestan 5th)
Pasdaran Avenue
Tehran
Iran
Fax: (011.98.21) 2258 0432