• 8 December 2009
  • Posted By NIAC
  • 1 Comments
  • Human Rights in Iran

Reporters Without Borders Launches Campaign To Support Iranian Journalists

8 December 2009 Posted By NIAC

Written by NIAC Staff

Paris, France – “Iranian authorities regard photographers as spies,” said “EM,” an Iranian photojournalist who has recently sought refuge in France with the help of Reporters Without Borders. “The police came to my home. I was lucky because I was out reporting. I fled the country the same day. I left with my camera and a small bag. I crossed the border after nightfall.”

Reporters Without Borders (RWB), an international non-governmental organization based in France, has recently launched a campaign to aid fleeing journalists, like “EM” and bloggers in their struggle for a safe passage toward freedom. “In view of the scale of this exodus, [we are] launching an appeal for financial support for these journalists and bloggers, who find themselves utterly destitute as they search for a safe refuge.”

“The press freedom situation is getting worse by the day in Iran,” states RWB in their recent press release. “Journalists who have chosen not to the leave the country are being constantly threatened or summoned by the intelligence services, including the intelligence service of the Revolutionary Guards. Some have been given long prison sentences at the end of completely illegal judicial proceedings.”

As a result, the large exodus of Iranian journalists that due to the crackdown facilitates the silencing program of the Iranian regime and creates a humanitarian crisis where many journalists flee to countries such as Turkey, Iraq, or Afghanistan where they are subject to harassment, surveillance, and possible extradition back to Iran.

Donations to this campaign “will help to pay for their air tickets and other forms of travel, and for food, lodging and medical care.”

While also helping journalists seek refuge during trouble times, RWB has also supports those journalists whose fates have not been so fortunate. RWB is seeking justice for Zahra Kazemi, the Iranian-Canadian journalist who died while being held by Iranian authorities, by supporting her son, Stephan Hashemi, in his lawsuit against the Islamic Republic. Hashemi is seeking reparations in a Montreal court for “the detention, torture and death of his mother… in a Tehran prison in July 2003.”

If you would like to donate or find out more about these worthy causes, please visit Reporters Without Borders’ website here.

Posted By NIAC

    One Response to “Reporters Without Borders Launches Campaign To Support Iranian Journalists”

  1. Arman says:
    December 14, 2009 at 10:35 pm

    I, as an Iranian American, applaud your stance against the current oppressive regime. However my friends, sanctions are the solution at this point. Let me ask you a question…Who benefits the most if sanctions are lifted??? Not the people of Iran! It will be the Revolutionary Guards who will become as powerful as the Saudi royal family. Whoare we kidding? Khomeini was a good man?? We are in the beginning of a movement that occured in France and western nations some 200 years ago-democracy (a true democracy) will overcome this regime who has put Iran in a grave for the past 30 years.

    Reply

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Tell Google: Stop playing Persian Gulf name games!

May 14, 2012
Larry Page
Chief Executive Officer
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, California 94043

Dear Mr. Page:

It has come to our attention that Google has begun omitting the title of the Persian Gulf from its Google Maps application. This is a disconcerting development given the undisputed historic and geographic precedent of the name Persian Gulf, and the more recent history of opening up the name to political, ethnic, and territorial disputes. However unintentionally, in adopting this practice, Google is participating in a dangerous effort to foment tensions and ethnic divisions in the Middle East by politicizing the region’s geographic nomenclature. Members of the Iranian-American community are overwhelmingly opposed to such efforts, particularly at a time when regional tensions already have been pushed to the brink and threaten to spill over into conflict. As the largest grassroots organization in the Iranian-American community, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) calls on Google to not allow its products to become propaganda tools and to immediately reinstate the historically accurate, apolitical title of “Persian Gulf” in all of its informational products, including Google Maps.

Historically, the name “Persian Gulf” is undisputed. The Greek geographer and astronomer Ptolemy referencing in his writings the “Aquarius Persico.” The Romans referred to the "Mare Persicum." The Arabs historically call the body of water, "Bahr al-Farsia." The legal precedent of this nomenclature is also indisputable, with both the United Nations and the United States Board of Geographic Names confirming the sole legitimacy of the term “Persian Gulf.” Agreement on this matter has also been codified by the signatures of all six bordering Arab countries on United Nations directives declaring this body of water to be the Persian Gulf.

But in the past century, and particularly at times of escalating tensions, there have been efforts to exploit the name of the Persian Gulf as a political tool to foment ethnic division. From colonial interests to Arab interests to Iranian interests, the opening of debate regarding the name of the Persian Gulf has been a recent phenomenon that has been exploited for political gain by all sides. Google should not enable these politicized efforts.

In the 1930s, British adviser to Bahrain Sir Charles Belgrave proposed to rename the Persian Gulf, “Arabian Gulf,” a proposal that was rejected by the British Colonial and Foreign offices. Two decades later, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company resurrected the term during its dispute with Mohammad Mossadegh, the Iranian Prime Minister whose battle with British oil interests would end in a U.S.-sponsored coup d'état that continues to haunt U.S.-Iran relations. In the 1960s, the title “Arabian Gulf” became central to propaganda efforts during the Pan-Arabism era aimed at exploiting ethnic divisions in the region to unite Arabs against non-Arabs, namely Iranians and Israelis. The term was later employed by Saddam Hussein to justify his aims at territorial expansion. Osama Bin Laden even adopted the phrase in an attempt to rally Arab populations by emphasizing ethnic rivalries in the Middle East.

We have serious concerns that Google is now playing into these efforts of geographic politicization. Unfortunately, this is not the first time Google has stirred controversy on this topic. In 2008, Google Earth began including the term “Arabian Gulf” in addition to Persian Gulf as the name for the body of water. NIAC and others called on you then to stop using this ethnically divisive propaganda term, but to no avail. Instead of following the example of organizations like the National Geographic Society, which in 2004 used term “Arabian Gulf” in its maps but recognized the error and corrected it, Google has apparently decided to allow its informational products to become politicized.

Google should rectify this situation and immediately include the proper name for the Persian Gulf in Google Maps and all of its informational products. The exclusion of the title of the Persian Gulf diminishes your applications as informational tools, and raises questions about the integrity and accuracy of information provided by Google.

We strongly urge you to stay true to Google’s mission – “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” – without distorting or politicizing that information. We look forward to an explanation from you regarding the recent removal of the Persian Gulf name from Google Maps and call on you to immediately correct this mistake.

Sincerely,

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