Majid Beiranvand, an Iranian journalist and editor-in-chief of the weekly publication “Horo”, has been sentenced to one year in prison and exile to Marvast county in Yazd province.
The case stemmed from a complaint filed by the governor of Lorestan province against Majid Beiranvand. He had previously republished an online signature campaign in his media outlet that criticized the Lorestan governor.
The issuance of a prison and exile sentence against a journalist based on a complaint from an Iranian government official comes at a time when the First Vice President of Iran had previously prohibited complaints against media outlets and journalists without the “approval and review by the Government’s Information Dissemination Working Group.” Prior to that, Masoud Pezeshkian, in the second week of his presidency, had agreed—concurrently with Journalist’s Day—to a request from the Tehran Provincial Association of Journalists to “withdraw complaints by government institutions against media professionals.”
Nevertheless, according to an investigative report by the Organization for Defending the Free Flow of Information (DeFFI), in the first 100 days of Masoud Pezeshkian’s presidency, authorities, institutions, and state-owned companies—not only failed to withdraw many of their existing complaints against journalists and media outlets but also filed new ones. During this period, at least 38 new judicial cases were opened against media and journalists, with government institutions and officials accounting for more than 50% (20 cases) of the complainants.