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Watching and waiting in Tabriz

| Category: Iran
Tabriz Bazaar - Tabriz, Iran
Above, light penetrates through the roof of the Tabriz bazaar


Mohammad Khiabani

Tabriz, Iran--Nobody doubts Tabriz's revolutionary credentials. During a November 2009 visit to the city, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recalled, "the people [of Tabriz and Iranian Azerbaijan] are pioneers of the pro-constitution movement, repelling the aggressors and acts of mischief and defending the supreme ideals of the Islamic Revolution."
The uprising of 29th of Bahman (February 19, 1978) in the city was a key continuation of the forty-day cycles of protest that spurred the Iranian Revolution forward. Further back, Tabriz, due to its closeness to Turkish and Russian intellectual circles, was a vanguard of intellectual agitation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the 1891 Tobacco Protest and the 1906 Constitutional Revolution to the 1946 Autonomous Azerbaijan's People's Government, Tabrizis have a long lineage of rebelliousness. How does this history resonate in the current, still-simmering political crisis centered in Tehran?


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Jerusalem - - First and foremost, Muthaffar explains of the difficulties faced by Palestinian filmmakers in the occupied Palestinian territories, given the lack of Palestinian funding. "Palestinian directors have to be their own producers." Her work is edgy and "lately, I tend to be sarcastic about the whole situation," she says. Much of her work is screened internationally and in the occupied Palestinian territories, mostly in refugee camps across the West Bank.

"Because of everything, it's hard to get Palestinians to view films. I am lucky, I have freedom of movement. I can be there, and it's important."

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More than seven months into the disputed June 12 presidential elections in Iran, the trend of arresting and intimidating the country's journalists continues unabated. Tens of journalists, members of editorial boards, and the head of Iran's Association for the Defense of Press Freedom are in detention; the offices of the country Association of Journalists is sealed off on orders of former hardline prosecutor Mortezavi; and many journalists are out of job. But even these reporters continue to face daily intimidation and are summoned by the ministry of intelligence and Tehran's police, are interrogated and are threatened.

During these turbulent seven months, many journalists have chosen forced exile and await a review of their applications by the UN's high Commissioner for Refugees in neighboring countries. Amongst those who have remained in Iran, many have opted to switch jobs and work as secretaries or drivers: but the threats and intimidation still continue. Journalists who continue to work despite the serial warnings by ministry of Islamic guidance, repeated circulars of the supreme national security council, and the summons, threats etc that bombard them from security officials is the subject of this Rooz interview.


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