Iranian Media

The US and the West, in addition to the unilateral economic and financial sanctions they have imposed which are outside the UN framework, have recently made the Iranian media target of their illegal actions. But this time the victims of the attack are not the people of Iran but the Persian, Arabic and English language audience of the Iranian media throughout the world.

In a flagrant violation of the basic right of freedom of expression, some satellite providers removed Iranian channels off the air. The Western media which gives priority to the coverage of news of economic sanctions imposed on Iran, kept silent about sanctions against the Iranian channels.

The Hong Kong-based Asia Satellite Telecommunications Co Ltd (AsiaSat) has taken all Iranian channels off air in east Asia and therefore, the Iranian channels are not being received in India since November 15, 2012. The satellite provider says the decision is in line with a law recently signed by the US
president. According to the new sanctions regime, American companies are banned from doing business with Iran. Nearly 37 per cent of AsiaSat’s shares are owned by General Electric which itself is owned by an American company.

The European Satellite Company (Eutelsat) ordered the media service provider Arqiva to take 19 Iranian radio and TV channels off its Hot Bird satellite from October 15, 2012. These channels include Press TV, al-Alam, Jam- e-Jam 1 and 2, Sahar 1 and 2, Islamic Republic of Iran News Network (IRINN), Quran TV and al-Kawthar. Eutelsat, by issuing an official statement, announced that this decision was taken on the basis of the sanctions imposed by the European Union.

The US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) also ordered the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (Intelsat) to stop broadcasting Iranian channels.

In line with the efforts to silence the Iranian media which exposes the criminality, hypocrisy and duplicity of the policies of the Zionist regime and the Western powers, Maya Naser, the Press TV correspondent, who used to report crimes of the foreign powers in Syria, was also assassinated a few months ago.

Imposing the ban on the Iranian media which has no links with the Iranian nuclear programme shows that the whole project of inhuman sanctions against the 75 million common people of Iran is not derived from the alleged concern that it is trying to build nuclear weapons, but is motivated by the concern of the alternative voice from this country.

As Finian Cunningham, a prominent Irish columnist, in his articles titled, Silencing Press TV is murdering the truth wrote, the West claims that the aim of these sanctions is to draw Iran into serious negotiations on its nuclear programmeme, but this is a lie. Iran is not obstructing the negotiations as the West alleges. It is the US and its Western allies who have created the impasse in negotiations by continually insisting that Iran must abandon its legally entitled rights to peaceful nuclear energy as a signatory to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Yet the Western media and officials represent it as a reasonable demand which Iran is not reciprocating and thereby causing a diplomatic problem. This issue illustrates that the premise for the sanctions is baseless and therefore their application is illegal.

Iran is unique and a frontrunner in the world in the field of not building atomic weapons. It has signed the Non
Proliferation Treaty, all its nuclear activities are under the complete supervision of
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and it has proposed the idea of “Nuclear energy for all, nuclear weapons for none”. Iran, unlike any other country in the world, also has got an additional and more important commitment towards not building atomic weapons. The commitment comes out of a fatwa of Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, who has declared the atomic weapons as haram (forbidden). In Islam a fatwa is the most stringent prohibition and for the Muslims its sanctity is even more than the conventional national and international laws. It should also be added that no religious scholar in the world has ever issued such a progressive and peace heralding fatwa.

Most of the usual defenders of free speech have yet to come out and defend Iran against what seems like a clear-cut case of censorship. Deafening silence and in some cases cooperation with the illegal actions against Iran, including economic sanctions, killing of scientists, sabotage, throttling its media and threats of military attacks is not a good omen for the whole world.

(The views expressed by the author are personal)