London has summoned the top Iranian diplomat in the country over “serious threats against journalists living in the UK”.
The British Foreign Office summoned Chargé d’Affaires Mehdi Hosseini Matin on Monday “to make it clear that the UK does not tolerate death threats and threats to media freedom,” said British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly.
Britain will “always stand up against countries that threaten the fundamental values of freedom of expression and freedom of the media,” Cleverly added.
On Saturday, the private television station Iran International announced that it was closing its London studios on the advice of British police. The background to this is the increase in “state-supported” threats against the Persian-language private broadcaster, which reports a lot about the protests in Iran, according to Iran International. Accordingly, two journalists are said to have received death threats.
British police said they had “serious concerns about the safety of the people who work at this company”.
Human rights activists criticize the closure of the station
Human rights activists criticized the closure of the company with around a hundred employees in the British capital. Britain is “certainly able to guarantee the security of Iran International.
It’s a question of political will,” Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the Norway-based Iran Human Rights Group, tweeted.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesman denied the allegations, telling journalists on Monday that the police had been working “extremely hard” to protect the station’s staff and that efforts are continuing. Two other channels continue to report in Persian from the UK: BBC Persian and Manoto TV.
The UK also on Monday imposed new sanctions on three Iranian judges who handed down the death penalty to protesters and five commanders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. The sanctions include an asset freeze and a visa ban.
The European Union also tightened its sanctions against Iran on Monday because of the violent crackdown on the protest movement.
According to the list of sanctions published in the Official Journal, the EU foreign ministers banned property and entry from 32 other Iranian leaders and two organizations. Among them are the Iranian Ministers of Culture and Education, Mohammad Mehdi Esmaeili and Yousef Nouri.
Demonstrations against the government in Tehran have been going on in Iran for months. The protests were triggered by the death of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in September. She was arrested by the Morality Police for allegedly violating the strict Islamic dress code and died a short time later in a hospital.
Activists accuse the authorities of mistreating Amini. Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands arrested during the protests. (AFP)
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