Iason Athanasiadis

The relentless crackdown on the press in Iran is, well, relentless. In the last few days we have received word that 11 more journalists have been arrested, including former CPJ International Press Freedom Award winner Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, at left.

There are 23 other journalists already in prison in Iran, according to the global census CPJ carried out on December 1. Scores of other journalists have been arrested and released; mores still have been intimidated, beaten and harassed.

News from the Committee to Protect Journalists

My friend and colleague Iason Athanasiadis spent three weeks in an Iranian prison last month. In the ongoing roundups of journalists since the June 12 election, Iason has seen his own friends and colleagues thrown in jail, including Majid Saeedi, a freelance photographer for Getty Images. 

New York, July 7, 2009--With at least 30 journalists currently in prison, Iran replaces China as the world's worst jailer of journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. CPJ called on the Iranian authorities to release all journalists who have been detained following the country's disputed June 12 presidential elections. 

Iason Athanasiadis is still a young man at 30, but he's an old school, shoe leather journalist. "Journalism's deepest, most honest contributions inevitably spring from on-the-ground reporting, unencumbered by policy agendas in Washington, London, or other foreign capitals," writes Sandy Tolan, author and University of Southern California journalism professor, today in Salon. "That's what epitomizes the work of my friend and colleague Iason Athanasiadis, and it's why his detention by Iranian authorities, on June 17 when trying to board a flight out of Iran, is so troubling."

New York, July 2, 2009--At least 24 journalists remain jailed in Iran, according to the latest CPJ research, while the government has instituted a broad and intrusive censorship regime.