The staff were also worried about their families in Iran at the moment. “They feel like they are working in a high-risk situation like a warzone,” he added. “So we’re in a kind of isolation which has affected the mental situation of our team because they feel alone, threatened and concerned about the future of their job.” Not only has it stopped people from seeing each other in the office, but it has also cut the other kinds of gatherings we used to have. On the toll this crusade has exacted on him and his colleagues, Mr Ramezanpour said: “Personally it has stopped all my social life. Mr Macmillan emphasised that these threats were “very, very real,” relating an incident in February when a Chechen national used as a proxy flew to the UK, went straight to the offices of Iran International, took photos and was arrested and charged under the Terrorism Act within 36 hours. Iran International was forced to pack up and move out at four hours' notice, its reporters told .uk, and successfully switched its around-the-clock coverage to be broadcast from their smaller base in Washington D.C. The regime has long persecuted “some famous or important journalists” for speaking out of line, but this has now been extended to everyone in the profession, he said. He told .uk a “new level of threat” had emerged in the past few months. He claimed the media environment there has worsened significantly since then, and that the situation now was worse than ever. He last worked on the ground in Iran in 2006. The group's leader, Hossein Salami, claimed responsibility for forcing the closure of Iran International's offices.Īliasghar Ramezanpour helped found BBC Persian in 2009 and set up Iran International in 2017, where he is currently Director of News. The driving force behind this intimidation campaign is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – a branch of the Iranian military whose vocation is to protect the Islamic ideology ushered in by the 1979 revolution. It was under armed guard 24/7 for nearly two months.” Ultimately this had ramped up to include fortifying Chiswick Business Park and turning it into what the military might call an operating base. Mr Macmillan added: “That manifested itself in a number of our senior staff being placed under special measures by the Metropolitan Police back in November. The repercussions for their London journalists are as shocking as they are severe. The two continued to operate from abroad and have constituted the primary sources of information reaching the West about what was actually happening to the Iranian people. Iran International reported on the protests doggedly, resulting in sanctions being placed on it alongside BBC News Persian back in October. On September 16, 2022, the 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian died in police custody after her arrest by the country’s so-called “morality police” on a charge of improperly wearing her hijab. Roger Macmillan, Director of Safety, Security & Resilience for the broadcaster said: “We have faced an inordinate amount of pressure over the last six to seven months since the murder of Mahsa Amini.” READ MORE: Biden orders deadly airstrikes after Iran drone attack kills American Ms O'Brien said: "The same happens to Iranian journalists in countries all over the world, in France, in Germany, in Turkey…" She stressed that this “transnational aspect” was of “great concern”, and should be recognised as such by UK politicians.
RSF claims more than 71 journalists have been arrested, detained or called in for questioning since the protests began – with 25 imprisoned to this day. According to the Iranian Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), more than 19,600 people were arrested and at least 527 were killed by the beginning of the year as suppression efforts by the authorities turned violent.Ī harsh crackdown on the media ensued to hide the extent of these crimes. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s regime has come down hard on the popular demonstrations of the past eight months.
In a Westminster committee hearing on April 19, Fiona O’Brien, UK Bureau Director for RSF said: “Lots of independent journalists in the UK are being targeted when they’re trying to write about Iran."
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