Tuesday, July 12, 2022

Iran Arrests Third Outspoken Filmmaker in Escalating Crackdown
July 12, 2022
Associated Press
FILE - In this file photo taken on Aug. 30, 2010, Iranian film director Jafar Panahi stand
s on a balcony overlooking Tehran during an interview with Agence France-Press
DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES —

Iran has arrested an internationally renowned filmmaker, several newspapers reported Tuesday, the third Iranian director to be locked up in less than a week as the government escalates a crackdown on the country's celebrated cinema industry.

The arrest of award-winning director Jafar Panahi and wider pressure on filmmakers follows a wave of recent arrests as tensions escalate between Iran's hardline government and the West. Security forces have detained several foreigners and a prominent reformist politician as talks to revive Tehran's nuclear accord with world powers hit a deadlock and fears grow over the country's economic crisis.

Panahi, one of Iran's best-known dissident filmmakers, had gone to the prosecutor's office in Tehran on Monday evening to check on the cases of his two colleagues detained last week, when security forces scooped him up as well, the reports said.

A colleague of Panahi, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals, told The Associated Press that authorities sent him to Iran's notorious Evin Prison to serve out a prison term dating back years ago.

In 2011, Panahi received a six-year prison sentence on charges of creating anti-government propaganda and was banned from filmmaking for 20 years. He was also barred from leaving the country.

However, the sentence was never really enforced and Panahi continued to make underground films — without government script approval or permits — that were released abroad to great acclaim.

Panahi has won multiple festival awards, including the 2015 Berlin Golden Bear for "Taxi," a wide-ranging meditation on poverty, sexism and censorship in Iran, and the Venice Golden Lion in 2000 for "The Circle," a deep dive into women's lives in Iran's patriarchal society.

FILE - Jury president Darren Aronofsky, center, holds the Golden Bear for Best Film for the film "Taxi" by Jafar Panahi at the Berlinale International Film Festival on Feb. 14, 2015. Panahi was not at the ceremony because he was not allowed to leave Iran.

The Berlin International Film Festival said it was "dismayed and outraged" to hear of Panahi's arrest, calling it "another violation of freedom of expression and freedom of the arts."

His detention came after the arrest of two other Iranian filmmakers, Mohamad Rasoulof and Mostafa al-Ahmad.

Authorities accused Rasoulof and al-Ahmad of undermining the nation's security by voicing opposition on social media to the government's violent crackdown on unrest in the country's southwest.

Following the catastrophic collapse of the Metropol Building that killed at least 41 people in May, protests erupted over allegations of government negligence and deeply rooted corruption. Police responded with a heavy hand, clubbing protesters and firing tear gas, according to footage widely circulating online.

Rasoulof won the Berlin Film Festival's top prize in 2020 for his film "There Is No Evil" that explores four stories loosely connected to the themes of the death penalty in Iran and personal freedoms under tyranny. In 2011, Rasoulof's film "Goodbye" won a prize at Cannes but he was not allowed to travel to France to accept it.

Cannes sharply condemned the arrests of the three filmmakers and "the wave of repression obviously in progress in Iran against its artists."

PEN America, a literary and free speech organization, said their detention marks a "brazen violation of their human right to free expression and speech."

Several foreigners have also landed in Iranian prison in recent weeks, including two French citizens, a Swedish tourist, a Polish scientist and others, spurring concerns that Iran is trying to leverage them as bargaining chips in negotiations.

It's a tactic Iran has used in the past, including in 2014 when authorities arrested Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. He was released a year and a half later in a prisoner swap with the United States as the landmark nuclear accord took effect.
On Monday, the family of a Belgian humanitarian worker being held in Iran, Olivier Vandecasteele, appealed to Brussels to do "everything" to secure his release from Evin Prison. They said he was arrested in late February after working for more than six years in Iran to help its Afghan migrant community.

The Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the AP on Tuesday it had asked Iran for his release on "several occasions" and still had "no information on the reasons of his arrest." It said the government was providing him with consular assistance.

Dissident Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi arrested 


Jul 11, 2022

FRANCE 24 English

Award-winning dissident Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi has been arrested, the third director to be detained in less than a week, the Mehr news agency said Monday.

 

Iran: Arrest of High-Profile Critics
New Crackdown Against Dissidents


Click to expand Image
Mostafa Tajzadeh, Iranian reformist politician, speaks during an interview in Tehran, Iran on June 15, 2021. © 2021 The Yomiuri Shimbun via AP Images

(Beirut) – Iranian authorities’ recent arrests of high-profile critics are part of a fresh crackdown on peaceful dissent, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities arrested a reformist critic, Mostafa Tajzadeh, and two film directors, Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-Ahmad, on July 9, 2022, followed on July 11, by another film director, Jafar Panahi.

“Unable or unwilling to tackle the many severe challenges facing Iran, the government has resorted to its repressive reflex of arresting popular critics,” said Tara Sepehri Far, senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch. “There is no reason to believe these recent arrests are anything but cynical moves to deter popular outrage at the government’s widespread failures.”

Agents of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Intelligence Organization arrested Tajzadeh at 11:30 p.m. on July 9 at his home, his wife, Fakhrossadat Mohtashamipour, posted on her Instagram account. Fars News Agency, which is close to intelligence services in Iran, reported on July 9 that Tajzadeh, a former deputy interior minister, was arrested on accusations of “acting against national security” and “publishing lies with the intent to disturb the public mind.”

The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) accused Rasoulof and Al-Ahmad of collecting signatures for a support letter for protestors demanding accountability after a building collapsed in the city of Abadan in Khuzestan province on May 23 that resulted in more than 40 deaths.

The authorities have prosecuted Rasoulof, an award-winning filmmaker and outspoken critic, for his work on several occasions. Most recently in 2020 a court sentenced him to one year in prison and a two-year ban on making films on the charge of “propaganda against the system” for the content of his movies.

On July 11, Mehr News Agency, owned by the Islamic Ideology Dissemination Organization, reported that Panahi, another prominent director, had been arrested, after he went to the Tehran prosecutor’s office to inquire about Rasoulof’s detention.

The authorities had previously arrested Tajzadeh on June 13, 2009, immediately following the disputed presidential elections that generated massive protests. A court sentenced him to six years in prison on the charge of “assembly and collusion to disrupt national security.” He was released in June 2016.

The recent arrests are part of a crackdown since May on peaceful dissent, amid the deterioration of economic conditions and what appears to be a deadlock in reviving the international community’s nuclear deal with Iran. The authorities have arrested, sentenced, and returned to prison over a dozen activists, including Narges Mohammadi, Saeed Madani, Keyvan Samimi, Mohammad Habibi, and Reza Shahabi. During the last week of June alone, the authorities arrested, sentenced, or summoned several journalists and activists, including Vida Rabani, Ahmad Reza Haeri, Amir Salar Davoudi, and Masoud Bastani.

The Iranian authorities should halt the crackdown on dissent and free people detained for their peaceful activism and criticism of the state, Human Rights Watch said.

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