Radio Zamaneh, the Persian language, progressive, unbiased, non-discriminatory source of news, analysis and opinion announces the fifth anniversary of its launch.
Funded entirely through independent contributions and established as a non-profit organization under Dutch law, Radio Zamaneh launched its broadcast on 4 August 2006, commemorating the date on which Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906 overthrew Persia’s despotic Qajar dynasty and formed the first democratic parliament, some 100 years ago.
It was only out of the courtesy of this network of citizen reporters that during the violent 2009 pro-democracy demonstrations in Iran, Radio Zameneh with a minimal number of staff in Iran played a key role in spreading the news. The response of the Islamic Republic of Iran was reactionary: they blocked the access of the Iranian population to this independent and unbiased information, Iran’s ambassador in the Hague publicly accused the Dutch government of interfering in Iran’s domestic affairs, leaders of the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guards repeatedly issued statements against Zamaneh accusing us of being an agent of Western intelligence services, and Radio Zamaneh’s popular website was attacked by the “Iranian Cyber Army” in January 2010.