Photo by : IRAN WATCH CANADA

" Media situation & Student movement in the last decade in Iran "
Montreal-Concordia University , Sunday Dec. 10, 2006 @ 5:00-7:00pm
Guest speakers: Mr. Ensafali Hedayat , journalist & Mr. Hassan Zarehzadeh Ardeshir ,student leader
organized by : " Bonyade Sokhane Azad" & Association of Human Rights - Montreal

Despite of ad in the community publications the presence of Iranian was not that many, but it was a very good evening , both speakers gave deep understanding of the situation most especially participants with their questions . The first speaker was Mr. Ensafali Hedayat and he spoke on the media situation in the last decade in Iran. His speech was as follows :
Journalism in Iran has a special way , in a country like Iran there are three angle of view and in all these angles journalists are condemned . The people also think that the journalists are government mercnaries . There are problems between people and government. Every government that took the office brought new definition of journalism, it's like defining mathemathics again , up to now the government did not give its definition of journalism,still the government think that we the journalists are spy.They always put a big question mark on journalists, from Iranian living abroad also the journalists are under question mark.Journalism in Iran has three categories : 1-Independent journalism/ journalists 2- partisan journalist 3-political journalists .
1- Independent journalists : Are able to find work somewhere and editors can not influence their openions on them , these journalists' articles are free from editors viewpoints.
2- Partisan journalists / Governmental journalists: Newspapers such as " Khorasan ", " Keyhan", " Ghods" and many others ........ many of these newspapers or journalists writes part of the news and by reading it we can understand what is going on in the government.
Political journalists - These journalists are unprofessional and unexperienced , these are journalists that has sympathy with government or with non-governmental organizations . Political journalists' income comes from another sources.
3- Professional journalists : These journalists have finished their study in one of the universities and their source of income is from their journalistic work.these journalists have clear understanding from the situation.
Journalists in Iran are not insured and they do not have insurance and when a newspaper is closed journalists have no source of income , as a result they can't pay their rent and can't buy foods , so they go and live with their parents again.
journalists that are from citys and rural areas , these journalists are the most oppressed journalists in Iran, its because sometimes we do not know for example how many of them from "Bluchestan" province or " Azarbayejan" province are arrested or are in prison. I know for example in Azarbayejan there are 4-5 journalists who are in prison and no one knows their names.
In Iran there are so many kind of journalists , for example one calls himself a moslem journalist and another ...... all of them call themselves journalist ,no one help the other if the other journalist is arrested. Our journalistim society do not believe in themselves, we have a lot of problems among ourselves, we do not defend each other , thats why when the regime arrest us no one comes forward in our defense.
In the history of journalism , we have Mr. Fatemi who was tied to two horses and his body was dismembered , in our history we have 12 journalists that were working with Mr. Fatemi and all of them were slited, again in our history in constitutional revolution , hundered years ago we have journalist who have been slited . We are impatient nation .We have raised our kids as revolutionaries , that means instead of teaching them to work with software , we thaught them with hardware. We are impatient and we do not want to do research work , Our modern history continuously repeating itself and the government dont like us , the governments have always saw us as security threat.

Newspaper in Iran is very cheap but our people can buy with that mony four pieces of bread. Our people as always do not want themselves to confront with the regime and therefore expect journalists to go forward and start fighting for them.

This is part of the speech and not all.

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Reported only by IRAN WATCH CANADA