The Supreme National Security Council has banned all Iranian newspapers and news agencies from publishing any news about Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the two reformist candidates in the June 12 presidential election — and now leaders of the Green Movement. Discussing anything about the election is off limits too. The apparent goal is to banish Mousavi and Karruobi from people’s minds.
The order was issued on Saturday, a day after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s Friday prayer sermons, during which he maintained his hardline stance. He said “those who are opposed to the government will be tolerated, but [those] confronting the political system will receive a harsh response.” He claimed that the 85% of the population, who took part in the June 12 vote, also support his reign. The question then (if this is true) is why the government needs to resort to such harsh and desperate measures?
The censorship was already in place in another form even before the June 12 election. Seda o Sima, the Voice and Visage of the Islamic Republic, the national network of radio and television stations controlled by the hardliners, was already not broadcasting news about the Mousavi or Karroubi campaigns, but disseminating propaganda about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad under the guise of “government’s news.”
