“We condemn the decision of the Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry to suspend al-Jazeera’s operations in Iran,” it said. “The authorities cannot shut down a channel just because it gives airtime to the opposition.”
“They have had the Arabic-language news channel in their sights for more than a year and have never let up on threats to restrict its work in the country,” the worldwide press freedom organisation added.
Al-Jazeera was one of the first channels to cover the clashes on 15 April and to report that there had been deaths and injuries. Two days later, the al-Jazeera bureau in Tehran was given verbal notice of a decision to suspend its work.
The authorities said the suspension would last until they were able to investigate the channel’s role in the clashes. Al-Jazeera has been accused of “inciting subversive elements to unleash disorder”.
Al-Jazeera spokesman, Jihad Ballout, told Reporters Without Borders that the channel viewed the Iranian authorities’ accusations as “baseless”.
Tehran previously threatened to sanction the Qatari-based channel in November 2004 if it failed to remove a cartoon viewed as insulting from its website. It received a second threat of expulsion shortly afterwards for having referred to the Arabic and not the “Persian” Gulf.
