Reformist Iranian Newspaper Shut Down After Interview With Opposition Poet
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Iran's leading reformist newspaper was shut down Monday for the second time in a year after publishing an interview with a poet who called for greater gender equality, authorities said.
The daily Shargh, or East, was founded in 2003 and first shut in September 2006 for publishing a cartoon deemed to have made fun of Iranian government hard-liners. It was allowed to reopen in June.
It published an interview Saturday with opposition poet Saghi Qahraman, who said that gender roles should be less restrictive and men should play a bigger role in household activities like taking care of children.
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This interview "with an anti-revolutionary figure, who is famous for promoting anti-morality materials, is the main reason behind the closure of the paper," said Ali Reza Malekian, a Culture Ministry official, according to the official IRNA news agency.
But the paper's editor, Ahmad Gholami, said the interview was a pretext for silencing one of the few remaining voices pushing for democratic reforms in Iran.
The judiciary has shut down more than 100 pro-reform newspapers and jailed dozens of editors and writers on vague charges of insulting authorities.
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The crackdown began amid a confrontation between reformers and hard-liners during the tenure of reformist President Mohammad Khatami, who was replaced by hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005.
"Publication of an interview is not a plausible justification for banning a newspaper," Gholami said.
The paper nonetheless apologized to readers Monday for its interview with Qahraman, an Iranian poet who says on her Web site she lives in Canada.
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Many of Shargh's writers are well-known reformists whose previous newspapers were banned in recent years by the hard-line Shiite Muslim clerics who have imposed strict interpretations of Islamic rules.