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Newspapers are tackling subjects they would not have dared approach a few years ago.
By FLORE DE PRENEUF
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 23, 2000
TEHRAN, Iran -- In the Azad newsroom, Nik-Ahang Kowsar's corner is called the time bomb.
Every day, he reads Iran's press seeking subjects for satire and draws three cartoons mocking conservative politicians.
"That's three different cartoons attacking them every day," says Kowsar, undaunted by a weeklong stay in prison this month.
"It's something between having a mission and craziness," says the 30-year-old cartoonist, who was jailed by the Press Supervisory Board for an incendiary cartoon representing a leading clergyman in the guise of a crocodile.
Crazy or not, repeated attacks by Kowsar and other journalists on conservative politicians in Iranian newspapers have produced tangible results by helping to rid Iran's Parliament of the bulk of its conservative members in Friday's elections. Early results suggest reformers will control more than 70 percent of the Parliament, scheduled to convene in May.
Many of the newly elected reformers are journalists, publishers of banned dailies or advocates of freedom of the press. The No. 2 vote-getter in Tehran is a female journalist, and one of the highest items on the reformers' agenda is amending a restrictive 1984 press law.
The Iranian press, which was anemic not long ago, owes its new vitality and political clout to the more tolerant atmosphere that followed the election of a liberal-minded president, Mohammed Khatami, in May 1997. Although television and radio broadcasting fall under the authority of Iran's spiritual leader and have remained in the hands of conservative clerics, anti-establishment newspapers have blossomed in the past few years.
The judiciary, controlled by hard-liners, has tried to silence as many newspapers and journalists as possible but has found itself outpaced by the growing number of people willing to take risks for political change.
"We were used to writing with our bags packed, ready to be taken to jail," says Ebrahim Nabavi, author of a widely read satirical column in the pro-Khatami newspaper Age of Freemen.
"There used to be only one liberal newspaper," says Nabavi, who was put in solitary confinement for a month last year when the press court found him guilty of endangering national security with his writing.
"But now there are more than 10 and I don't feel as threatened as before."
Analysts hope the newly elected reformist Parliament will help secure these gains.
"If parliamentarians can change the laws regarding the judiciary, then change could occur," says Kowsar.
However, laws passed by Parliament must be approved by the Council of Guardians, a sort of senate composed of 12 clerical Islamic scholars. In addition, some observers think the pro-Khatami coalition that secured an overwhelming majority in last week's poll will disintegrate into factions.
"The conservatives are defeated but they will form a very strong opposition minority, while reformers will be divided into factions," says Kioumars Saberi, 59, managing director of Mr. Flower's, a moderate satirical weekly.
"I'll show you the same press law next time you come," he predicts, pulling out of his desk drawer a dusty copy of the 1984 law.
Journalists like Kowsar and Nabavi are to a certain extent rewriting the laws themselves. Many of the limitations affecting their trade were never written down and are subject to change.
"We know we can't write about religion and we accept it -- we don't draw clerics," says Kowsar.
He can draw secular politicians but no one wearing a clerical outfit -- a severe limitation in a country ruled by clerics.
When Kowsar drew a crocodile shedding tears on the freedom of the press, young theology students thought a Tehran clergyman whose name rhymes with the Persian word for crocodile was being mocked. They rioted for several days, demanding Kowsar's head and the cultural minister's resignation. Kowsar says he was attacking the conservatives in general, not a given clergyman.
"I wouldn't attack a person. Criticizing the idea is more important," says Kowsar, who is used to working on the edge.
Journalists have started tackling subjects they wouldn't have dared approach a few years ago. They wrote extensively about the serial killing of dissidents by rogue intelligence officers in December 1998 and shed light on the disreputable role played in the affair by Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran's former president and a longtime politician. Rafsanjani's popularity plunged.
"Fifty percent of Rafsanjani's votes were taken away thanks to the activity of the press," says Nabavi. "Even if he was the third most important political figure in the country, we had the power to knock him down."
Once thought of as the next speaker of Parliament, Rafsanjani scored poorly in last week's election and probably will not secure a seat in Parliament until the runoff round.
While the press has become more influential in shaping public opinion, the demand for critical writing has also increased. Iranian readers used to be content with mild cultural cartoons such as those published in Mr. Flower's, founded in 1991. But the weekly has been losing readers in the past few years, especially among the young. They have gone to newspapers that offer more caustic political commentary.
"People have become obsessed with politics," says Nabavi, who would rather write about cinema.
"Before Khatami's election, people didn't have the space to express their democratic ideas," he says. "Since then people decided to become more active in politics -- the result is this new democracy."