MBEKI LEARNS FROM KHAMENI ?

Following Ronno Einstein's visit to Iran.....

IFEX WEBSITE
Supreme Leader publicly condemns media; persecuted journalist allowed to leave country

Country/Topic: Iran
Date: 07 September 2007
Source: Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
Person(s): Parnaz Azima

(RSF/IFEX) - RSF is concerned about a verbal assault on the media delivered by the Islamic Republic's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei, during a speech to the Assembly of Experts on 5 September 2007.


"What is left of press freedom now in Iran?" the organisation asked. "Ayatollah Khamenei's comments have reinforced the climate of censorship that oppresses all journalists who do not toe the official line. The last time the Supreme Leader attacked the media, in the spring of 2000, a wave of repression was unleashed on pro-reform newspapers."

In his 5 September address, Khamenei accused the Iranian media of "malice" and of "collaborating with enemy media" and he condemned the way some newspapers hailed former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's election on 3 September to head the Assembly of Experts as a blow to the hardliners.

Khamenei's attack on the media came less than a week after the release of a joint statement signed by more than 150 journalists protesting against a decline in press freedom. They criticised Tehran prosecutor Said Mortazavi for summoning newspaper editors to ban them from referring to the case of three students who have been held for three months for allegedly publishing "anti-Islamic" articles. They also threatened to continue issuing joint statements if the situation did not change.

Meanwhile, Iranian-American journalist Parnaz Azima was summoned by intelligence ministry officials on 4 September and told that she would be given her passport back and would be allowed to leave the country. Azima's passport was confiscated when she arrived in Iran last January with the aim of visiting her ailing mother.

Azima is nonetheless still charged with circulating anti-revolutionary propaganda and engaging in activities against state security because she works for Radio Farda, an independent station based in Prague.

Mbeki's ANC newsletter
However, nobody, and nothing whatsoever, will persuade us to change our conviction that our two Ministers of Health during our years of liberation, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, are genuine heroines of our people and our democratic revolution. Our movement is fully conscious of the fact that because the health portfolio in any government deals literally with matters of life and death, it is one of the most difficult, challenging and controversial in all governance systems.
We will, constantly and without equivocation, with no exceptions, combat the evil attempt to present our Ministers of Health, past and present, as legitimate targets of personal vilification by those who made a minimal contribution to our struggle for liberation, which cost the lives of many of our people, and have made and are, at best, making a paltry contribution to the complex task of building a non-racial, non-sexist, prosperous and peaceful South Africa.
Recent events have brought to the fore the obligation our movement faces, to choose between either ecstatic media adulation, or the defence of the truth as it understands this truth. The decisive factor in this regard has been whether we would fight for the health of our people or sacrifice this to gain media popularity. In obverse, we confront the challenge whether to enhance our media approval or persist on a scientifically based pursuit of the goal of health for all.