LONDON: A global media watchdog has condemned the arrest in West Azerbaijan of an Iranian photojournalist for taking pictures of Afghan refugee camps.
Majid Saeedi was held on Aug. 25 in the city of Khoy for reportedly “taking photos of forbidden border regions.” However, he had obtained authorization from the relevant authorities to cover the camps.
Sherif Mansour, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ program coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, on Tuesday said: “Iranian authorities must free photojournalist Majid Saeedi immediately and unconditionally and let him do his job documenting the lives of Afghan refugees in Iran.
“Journalists must be able to cover such events of national and international interest without fear that they will be arbitrarily detained,” he added.
Iranian intelligence and security agents recently arrested financial reporter Amir-Abbas Azarmvand at his parents’ house in Tehran on security charges. The journalist, who works for the state-run Iranian economic newspaper SMT, was charged with “spreading propaganda against the system.”
Mansour also called for the writer’s immediate release and said: “Iran’s continued jailing of journalists for doing their jobs is an outrageous form of censorship that must end.”
According to the international freedom of information organization, Reporters Without Borders, Iran ranked 174 out of 180 countries in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index.
Since the 1979 revolution, at least 860 journalists and citizen-journalists have been prosecuted, arrested, imprisoned, and in some cases executed by the Iranian regime.
