Posted on 09/15/2002 2:56:09 PM PDT by knighthawk
TEHRAN, Sept 15 (AFP) - Iran's judiciary on Sunday ordered the closure of two reformist newspapers, accusing them of "publishing lies and being hostile to the Islamic regime", IRNA reported.
The daily Golestan-e-Iran (Garden of Iran), which opened just over a week ago, was accused of "publishing lies, hostile propaganda and rumours", the official news agency reported.
The paper was also labelled as having being run by "unqualified" people.
Golestan-e-Iran said in its first edition that it intended "to encourage and deepen the reform" movement launched with the election of President Mohammad Khatami in 1997.
It billed itself as the paper for the "youth and the third generation" of the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The daily's director, Mostafa Malekian, had written that "the repression of ideas and people is a sick solution resulting from the old cultural and political structure that is ruling Iran".
The second paper closed, the weekly Vaght (Time), was accused of publishing articles classed as an "attack on modesty".
It was accused of having published "depraved" photographs of women as well as images of personalities from Iran's former imperial regime, ousted in 1979.
Reacting to the latest suspension, reformist MP and spokesman for Iran's Professional Association of Journalists Rajabali Mazrui said the closures were "a new attack on freedom of expression and the press in Iran."
Nearly 90 Iranian publications have been suspended in the past two years in a crackdown on the reformist press by the Iranian judiciary, a bastion of conservatives.
Religious governments resemble Communist governments; what could the connection be?
Maybe the anti-reformers in Iran are worried, and taking preemptive action....
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