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Judiciary bans 12 reformist publications

By Jonathan Lyons

April 24, 2000, TEHRAN, Iran (Reuters) - Iran's hard-line judiciary has suspended 12 pro-reform newspapers and journals, the official IRNA news agency said Monday, in the biggest blow yet aimed at reforms of President Mohammad Khatami. Related photos here

IRNA said eight dailies were among those banned by order of the Tehran justice department for ignoring previous warnings to stop publishing material that ``disparaged Islam and the religious elements of the Islamic revolution.''

``The justice department said the tone of material in those papers had brought smiles to the faces of the enemies of the Islamic Republic and hurt the feelings of devout Muslims at home and even the leader of the Islamic revolution,'' IRNA reported.

A copy of the order to one newspapers, made available to journalists, said the ban was in effect ``until further notice.'' But editors said they did not expect to be back in business anytime soon.

Last week, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said some reformist newspapers had been turned into ``bases of the enemy,'' remarks widely seen here as signaling a campaign against press freedoms fostered by the president.

Among those closed were the mass-circulation Fath and Asr-e Azadegan, both at the forefront of Iran's press revolution. Also banned were the intellectual weekly Aban and the pro-reform dailies Arya and Aftab-e Emrouz.

However, Azad, also on the list published by IRNA, managed to appear Monday morning. Press officials and the newspaper's editor were not immediately available for comment.

Appeal For Calm

Behzad Nabavi, spokesman for the reform coalition close to the president, called on the public to remain calm. ``The (reformist) Front is opposed to any kind of irrational action which may free the hands of the violence-mongers,'' he said.

Disappointed readers heard the news of the ban as they queued at normally busy Tehran kiosks.

``The conservatives have signed their own death warrant by closing down newspapers. They don't know this is the beginning of the end for them,'' said one elderly man, angry that his daily Asr-e Azadegan was no longer for sale.

President Khatami, himself a former newspaperman, has encouraged an independent press as a key part of his campaign for a civil society within Iran's Islamic system. Saturday he reaffirmed his support for reform.

But the clerical establishment, which controls the judiciary and most other levers of power, has fought him at every turn.

One reformist analyst said the press crackdown, first signaled late Sunday, was likely to be accompanied by other tough measures against Khatami's cultural liberalization.

These could include tightened security on the streets of the capital, as well as tighter enforcement of Iran's strict rules on modest dress and segregation of the sexes. Under Khatami, public life has become much more relaxed than in earlier years.

So far there have been no reports of any protests of the kind that greeted the sudden closing last July of Salam, then the leading reformist voice. That produced the worst civil unrest since the aftermath of the 1979 revolution.

Advance Warning

Although the scale of the press bans appeared to catch the reform movement by surprise, there were plenty of warnings in recent days that trouble was brewing.

In two speeches in less than a week, Ayatollah Khamenei took aim at what he called ``un-Islamic'' elements in the reform movement, particularly in the press.

Prosecutions of pro-reform editors and journalists immediately picked up speed.

The dean of the reform press, Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, was jailed for 30 months after his last appeal against charges of insulting Islamic values was rejected.

Saturday, maverick editor and author Akbar Ganji was jailed before trial on charges he defamed the security forces in publishing allegations that senior intelligence officials were linked to the serial murders of dissidents.

A number of reformist politicians and journalists, meanwhile, have been summoned before the Revolutionary Court after a seminar they attended in Berlin was deemed to have insulted revolutionary and Islamic values.

In addition to Khatami's defense of reform, his minister of culture and Islamic guidance, Ataollah Mohajerani, vowed he would not stand by as newspapers were closed.

``If the Ministry of Islamic Guidance becomes a tool for closing newspapers, I will not stay in this job,'' he said.

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