posted January 26, 2001 08:59               

January 25, 2001

Paris, FRANCE - On January 24 of this year, international human rights group Reporters sans frontiers (RSF), or Reporters without Frontiers, publicly condemned the Iranian judiciary for having sentenced 12 Iranian
journalists to prison for "anti-Islamic propaganda" and "activities against national security".

The Paris-based human rights group held that such practice of law contradicts Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights, which Iran has ratified.

The RSF called on Iranian authorities to release the ten imprisoned journalists immediately (the other two were convicted in absentia) and to repeal the Law on the Press passed on last April 17.

According to RSF sources, it was under this Law that, since then, over 30 publications and news agencies of moderate orientation have been closed in Iran, and journalists, who were critical of most odious manifestations of fundamentalism, have been thrown to jails there. The RSF has launched a petition in support of the Iranian journalists at its website www.rsf.fr .

According to a report by Student Movement Coordinating Committee for Democracy in Iran, or SMCCDI , several hundred students marched through the town of Yassoudj in southwest Iran of January 24 waving slogans "Journalists must be freed!", "Freedom for Iran", and "Bring the murderers to justice". Law enforcement did not intervene in the action.

The SMCCDI called this rally the "unprecedented event in a small Iranian
town".