The Iranian regime has decided to contract its regime, by electing the supreme leader’s desired candidate Ebrahim Raisi, who is famous for his role in the 1988 political massacre. This decision is the start of a new era of human rights violation, execution, and repression, especially the youths.
UN Watch in two separate tweets pointed out this event and wrote: “Iran’s ruling regime is likely to install Ebrahim Parsi — who sat on a four-man “death committee” that oversaw the execution of 5,000 political prisoners — as its next president. Will U.N. rights chief @mbachelet speak out?”
In another tweet, it said: “The Islamic Republic of Iran rigs presidential “elections” to ensure that its hand-picked favorite wins. Will U.N. chief @antonioguterres stand up for free elections in Iran?”
Election censorship under the shadow of ‘Raisi’s’ security
Reporters Without Borders in its latest ranking, ranked Iran 174th country out of 180, in the 2021 world freedom index and wrote: “Iran is still one of the world’s most repressive countries for journalists, subjecting news and information to relentless control. At least 860 journalists and citizen-journalists have been prosecuted, arrested, imprisoned and in some cases executed since the 1979 revolution. The Islamic Republic shows no signs of relaxing its harassment of independent journalists and media outlets or loosening its tight grip on the media landscape as a whole. Iran’s journalists are still constantly subjected to intimidation, arbitrary arrest, and long jail sentences imposed by revolutionary courts at the end of unfair trials.”
Now surprising but with a specified alibi Raisi claimed then criticized the government’s behavior about freedom and said: “Freedom happens in the light of security. I deeply believe in freedom of thought, pen, and freedom of expression.” (State-run daily Mashregh News, May 31, 2021)
But on June 11, 2021, RSF wrote: “With official campaigning for next week’s presidential election now underway in Iran, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) again condemns the regime’s censorship of the media, its use of threats against journalists, and the absence of independent reporting.
“Since 16 May, the deadline for candidate registration, RSF has logged no fewer than 42 cases of journalists receiving summonses from the prosecutor’s office or threats from intelligence ministry officials.”
Raisi and forty years of crime
Raisi said in his introduction: “I was proud that from the beginning of the victory of the revolution and by the order of Khomeini, in my youth, that is, at the age of 20, I oversaw the Karaj Prosecutor’s Office, and then I oversaw the Tehran Prosecutor’s Office for a few years, and I oversaw the General Inspectorate for ten years and for another ten years as the First Deputy of the Judiciary.” (Mashregh News, May 31, 2021)
It is very clear that someone with such positions in the judiciary system of a brutal regime like in Iran must be directly involved in all the regime’s cruel actions over the last 42 years.
This explains the regime’s brutal behavior at the time of every election. Arresting journalists and prohibiting free opinion at the time of the election has to become a normal event despite all the regime’s claims which are obvious on social media. On this, RSF wrote:
“The range of prohibitions that have been issued to journalists include making “negative or critical comments about the election” and “criticizing Ebrahim Raisi,” a cleric who is the current head of the judiciary and a close Khamenei ally, and who also happens to be one of the presidential candidates. The message of these bans could not be clearer.
“Although Iran is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Islamic Republic has never respected article 25 requiring ‘genuine’ elections with ‘universal and equal suffrage and held by ‘secret ballot, guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors,’ or article 19 guaranteeing freedom of expression and information, a precondition for voters to be able to make a choice,” said Reza Moini, the head of RSF’s Iran/Afghanistan desk.
“In view of the threats against journalists, censorship of newspapers, filtering of news websites and social media, and a crackdown on critical opinion, it is impossible to talk of a democratic electoral process.”
Blocking the media and banning American and British journalists
Since the only serious and decisive red line of Khamenei in the elections is an uprising, the regime had set up its entire repressive apparatus before the official election campaign.
The parliament drafted a bill entitled ‘Banning American and British Journalists from Entering Iran’ in late April 2021, according to which the media inside Iran were also banned from publishing news published in the American and British media.
The draft of the parliament, which was signed by 41 deputies, states:
“Considering that the foreign media, especially the American and British media, take various actions against the national interests of Iran and the main actors of the mentioned media, namely journalists, take actions against the Islamic Republic of Iran to impose oppressive sanctions of the US and European countries. Therefore, in order to counter the sanctions and prevent their escalation, it is necessary to ban the perpetrators of anti-Iranian activities from operating in Iran.”
RSF condemned this action and wrote:
“Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the latest censorship attempt in Iran, in the form of a proposed law currently before the Iranian parliament that would ban US and British journalists from entering Iran and would ban the Iranian media from reporting anything that the US and British media publish. RSF urges Iran’s parliamentarians to reject the entire bill.”
