Under the cosh

FOR Jason Rezaian, the Iran correspondent of the Washington Post and his wife Yeganeh Salehi, herself a journalist, the knock on the door came on July 22nd. Security men took them away and, almost two weeks later, they and a photographer for the American newspaper are still in custody. Nobody knows what they are accused of and family members have received no information about their whereabouts. On August 4th the case became murkier when it was reported that the caretaker of Mr Rezaian's building died after being tasered by Revolutionary Guards when he asked to see an arrest warrant.

Iran has long been hostile to the media. Press cards issued to journalists based in Iran are often withdrawn without warning and the authorities are prone to charge writers with vague offences such as posing a risk to national security, spreading propaganda or failing to follow "Islamic guidance". Twenty-seven journalists are currently in jail in Iran, according to the International Federation of Journalists, a Brussels-based lobby. But in the wake of the election last year of Hassan Rohani as president pressure on the media eased. Several journalists were freed in the days after he took office.

That now appears to have changed. Mr Rezaian and his wife (pictured above) are part of a worrying new spate of arrests. On May 28th Saba Azarpeik, an Iranian writer, was detained after Etemad (“Trust” in Farsi), a reformist newspaper, published a testy exchange between her and Muhammad Sadegh Kooshky, a professor at Tehran University and a member of an anti-Rohani pressure group. Two months later Marzieh Rasouli, a writer on arts and culture, was sentenced to 50 lashes and two years in prison. Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based organisation, says she and two other Iranian journalists, Parastoo Dokouhaki and Sahamoldin Borghani, were accused of collaborating with the BBC, which is seen as part of Britain's spy network by some hardliners.

No one knows why Iran feels the need to crack down now. The authorities don't like Iranians who work for foreign media, especially dual citizens like Mr Rezaian, an Iranian-American who speaks Farsi. Three days after Mr Rezaian and his colleagues were taken, Tehran's chief justice issued a statement suggesting espionage. “The security forces have the whole country under surveillance and control the activities of enemies," it said. But Iran says it wants reporters to cover normal life beyond what ruling clerics see as the West's perception of a country bent on obtaining nuclear weapons. Mr Rezaian was not known for writing particularly sensitive pieces; his last story before he was arrested was a tale about Iranians' fledgling interest in baseball. Most reckon the journalists are collateral damage in an ongoing battle between Mr Rohani's inner circle and the security and judicial establishment that is seeking to insulate itself from reform.

Locking up journalists is hardly good for Iran's reputation, but they tend to suffer in silence, especially when negotiations between Iran and six Western powers over Iran's nuclear programme remain under way. Ms Azarpeik is said to have been refused access to a lawyer, no trial date has been set and her Facebook page has been taken down. Her newspaper is banned from publishing anything about her detention. America has called for the release of Mr Rezaian but has not been too heavy in condemning Iran. So it is online publications, which can better evade the authorities, that are left to do their best to highlight cases of journalists and bloggers behind bars.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/pomegranate/2014/08/media-iran