About Etemad-e Melli

Etemad-e Melli

Etemad-e Melli, whose name meant National Trust, was a Persian-language reformist daily newspaper published in Tehran, Iran. It was the newspaper of the National Trust Party, the reformist party founded by the cleric Mehdi Karroubi, a former speaker of the Iranian parliament, and it shared the party's name. In the late 2000s it was regarded as a leading reformist title, and it became one of the most closely watched newspapers in the country during and after the disputed presidential election of 12 June 2009, in which Karroubi was a candidate. The authorities shut the paper down in August 2009, after it had become the vehicle for Karroubi's public allegations that protesters detained after the election had been raped and tortured in custody. Its closure was reported around the world and was condemned by press freedom organisations as an act of censorship aimed at silencing a prominent political figure.

A Party Newspaper Born of a Split

Etemad-e Melli grew out of a split in the reformist camp after the presidential election of 2005. Karroubi, who had been secretary-general of the Association of Combatant Clerics, stood in that election and finished third in the first round. He publicly challenged the fairness of the result, suggesting that military forces had illegally interfered to keep him out of the run-off, and he wrote an open letter to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei criticising the electoral process and announcing his resignation from official positions. Feeling that his own association had not supported him sufficiently, he left it and founded a new party, the National Trust Party, which was legalised on 13 August 2005 and was based on a reformist and populist message. The party established a newspaper of the same name, Etemad-e Melli, as its official organ, giving Karroubi a daily platform in Tehran that no other institution controlled.

Editorial Leadership Under Mohammad Ghouchani

The paper's best-known editor was Mohammad Ghouchani, one of the most prominent reformist journalists of his generation. Ghouchani was born in 1976 in Rasht and graduated from the University of Tehran with a degree in political science. He had started his career at Jameah, the famous daily of the early Khatami years, had written for Asr-e Azadegan, and in 2000 had won the political columnist of the year prize at the Iranian Press Festival before being jailed shortly afterwards for his writings. He became the first editor-in-chief of the daily Shargh in 2003 and later edited Ham-Mihan and the weekly Shahrvand-e-Emrooz, both of which were also banned. He then served as editor-in-chief of Etemad-e Melli, the official organ of Karroubi's National Trust Party. His presence signalled the paper's ambition: it was a party newspaper edited to the standards of the independent reformist press, rather than a simple party bulletin.

Position in the Reformist Press

By the late 2000s the Iranian reformist press had been thinned by a decade of court-ordered closures, and Etemad-e Melli stood among the few Tehran dailies that still gave reformist politicians and writers a daily voice. It was published by a party that regarded itself as committed to reformist goals and to the ideas of Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. In the 2009 election Karroubi's campaign had, by common description, the most radically reformist tone of the four presidential candidates: he advocated amending the constitution to increase the rights of provincial councils and to annul many state monopolies, and he proposed distributing shares in the national oil company to all adults. Etemad-e Melli carried that programme to its readers and functioned, in effect, as the printed headquarters of his candidacy, alongside Saham News, the news outlet affiliated with Karroubi and his party.

The Disputed Election of June 2009

The election of 12 June 2009, in which the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was declared the winner, triggered mass protests and a sweeping crackdown on the opposition and the press. Etemad-e Melli, as the paper of a defeated candidate who refused to accept the result, was an immediate target. The Committee to Protect Journalists recorded that the paper was prevented from being issued on 1 July 2009, when the government barred its publication, and that it was on occasion forced to go to print with blank spaces where censored articles would otherwise have appeared. Its journalists were also arrested. Ghouchani was detained in the aftermath of the election, in the week after polling day according to ARTICLE 19, and reporter Mujtaba Tehrani was arrested on 27 June 2009 on his way home from work, after which police searched his home and took his computer, according to Saham News as reported by the CPJ.

Karroubi's Letter on Rape in Custody

In late July 2009 Karroubi wrote to former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who headed the Assembly of Experts, the body charged with overseeing the Supreme Leader. In the letter, which was made public on 9 and 10 August and was published in Etemad-e Melli, Karroubi reported what detainees had told him: that some detained women had been raped so violently that they had sustained injuries and tears to their reproductive system, and that young boys had been savagely raped and left suffering depression and serious physical and mental damage. He demanded an investigation. The allegations ignited a massive controversy. Religious and political leaders widely condemned Karroubi for making them, parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani set up a special committee which announced on 12 August that the allegations were baseless, and there were suggestions that Karroubi might be prosecuted for libel. Karroubi prepared a statement in his own defence, and it was his intention to publish that response in Etemad-e Melli that brought the paper to its end.

The Closure of 16 and 17 August 2009

On the night of Sunday 16 August 2009 the paper was ordered to stop printing by Tehran prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi, according to Karroubi's website as reported by the New York Times, and the edition due on Monday 17 August did not appear. A representative of the prosecutor's office visited the paper's office and told its staff that it was being temporarily shut down, according to Saham News as reported by ARTICLE 19. Prosecutors wrote to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance claiming that the paper had printed material against national security and public peace, and the Tehran prosecutor's office, quoted by the Mehr news agency, said the ban followed the paper's insistence on publishing illegal material and that several complaints had been lodged against it. An investigating judge was reported by the state-run Press TV to have ordered the paper closed for publishing unlawful and criminal material. Mortazavi publicly denied that the paper had been banned, saying it had failed to publish because of printing problems. Protesters gathered outside the paper's offices on the Monday and clashed with police, who arrested some of the demonstrators.

International Reaction

The closure drew immediate international condemnation. The Committee to Protect Journalists, in a statement on 18 August 2009, condemned the government's censorship of the daily, noting that government agents had prevented copies of the paper from leaving the printing press apparently because of Karroubi's article responding to claims in the pro-government media that he had deliberately disseminated disinformation. Mohamed Abdel Dayem, the CPJ's Middle East and North Africa programme coordinator, said the crude form of censorship confirmed the intent of the authorities to silence a prominent political figure who was attempting to publish serious allegations of government mistreatment of detainees, and that Iran could not trumpet its democratic credentials while suppressing independent media. Reporters Without Borders likewise condemned the suspension of Etemad-e Melli, which it described as suspended until further notice for publishing illegal reports and articles threatening national security. ARTICLE 19 expressed concern at the closure of a leading reformist newspaper as the rape allegations reverberated through the corridors of power.

The Editor's Imprisonment and the Paper's Fate

For the paper's editor the closure was accompanied by personal punishment. Ghouchani was imprisoned along with many other journalists in the aftermath of the 2009 election, and both of his Karroubi-linked publications were closed down: Etemad-e Melli itself and Irandokht, the women's lifestyle magazine close to Karroubi whose office was raided in December 2009 and which he had also supervised. After 131 days in detention Ghouchani was released on bail. A statement later released by the National Trust Party, reported in September 2009, argued that the judicial dossier of the banned newspaper Etemad-e Melli had been taken over by a new judge because the previous judge had refused to rule in favour of closing the newspaper, an allegation that underlined, for the paper's supporters, the political character of its suppression. The daily never returned to the newsstands. When opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi later set out the Green Movement's media demands, he called on the government to reinstate the banned dailies Kalameh Sabz and Etemad-e Melli, pairing the two closed papers as symbols of the post-election silencing of the reformist press.

Legacy

Etemad-e Melli was remembered as the newspaper that carried the most explosive allegation of the 2009 crisis into print. As the organ of Karroubi's National Trust Party it had given a former parliament speaker and presidential candidate a daily voice outside state control, and under Ghouchani it had been edited by one of the defining reformist journalists of the Khatami and post-Khatami years. Its suppression in August 2009, on the eve of publishing its owner's defence of his claims about rape and torture in custody, became a case study in how the Iranian authorities used prosecutors, temporary bans and the detention of editors to close a newspaper without ever conceding that censorship was taking place. The paper itself remained closed, its editor was freed only after more than four months in detention, and its name survived chiefly in the record of the 2009 crackdown and in the demands, never met, for its reinstatement.