November 17 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The United States Department of the Treasury announced this Wednesday that it has sanctioned six senior employees of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) for failing to act objectively in the context of the protests that are taking place in the country following the death of the young Masha Amini.
“IRIB and its subsidiaries do not act as objective media outlets, but rather as a key tool in the Iranian government’s campaign of censorship and massive repression against its own people,” the Treasury said in a statement.
In this sense, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), in charge of this work, has indicated that the Iranian state media corporation has broadcast hundreds of forced confessions of detainees, in which the interviewees were forced to affirm that the Iranian authorities did not kill their relatives during nationwide protests, but rather died from unrelated accidental causes.
“The Iranian government’s systematic reliance on coerced confessions illustrates the government’s refusal to tell the truth to its citizens and to the international community,” said Brian Nelson, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.
The Treasury has specified that the action taken is directed at certain IRIB employees, while it has qualified that in 2013 the corporation was sanctioned as a whole for its participation in censorship activities of the Iranian Executive.
As the state media conglomerate of the Government of Iran, IRIB has a monopoly on radio and television services in Iran and plays a central role in restricting the exercise of the right to freedom of expression and impeding the free flow of information, explains the organism.
In addition, the federal agency has denounced that IRIB would also be cooperating with security agencies, including the Ministry of Intelligence and Security of Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Those sanctioned are Ali Rezvani and Ameneh Sadat Zabihpour, “interrogators-journalists”, for having participated in numerous forced confessions; Peyman Jebelli, director of the outlet appointed by Ayatollah Ali Khameni; Ahmad Noroozi, head of the International Service; Yousef Pouranvari, head of the Programming Department.
