The Islamic Republic's Effort to Silence Any Dissident Voices | Four Arrested on Charges of "Insulting" Qassem Soleimani
As government institutions try their best to present a unified picture of the reactions to the killing of Qassem Soleimani, a local website has reported the arrest of four people in Isfahan province on charges of insulting Qassem Soleimani.
The Sina Khabar website quoted Amir Hossein Razazzadeh, the public and revolutionary prosecutor of Shahreza city, as saying that the four people were arrested after expressing their opinions on social media. The judicial official also warned other citizens about expressing their opinions on social media. The authorities did not even say why the people were accused of insult. In the past, even cases critical of the Islamic Republic’s leader were prosecuted on charges of insult.
A number of VOA listeners also reported receiving threatening text messages asking them to delete their critical messages about Qassem Soleimani from social media.
In addition, the director of the Khabar Online website was summoned and prosecuted on charges of insulting Qassem Soleimani. In one of the articles translated from foreign media, the website used the verb "killed" for Qassem Soleimani, which was heavily attacked by the state media.
Another example of the suppression of voices that differ from the official narrative is the treatment of the representative from Tabriz.
On Saturday, January 4, Shahabuddin Bemaqdar, in response to the question of what the Islamic Republic's response to the killing of Qassem Soleimani should be, said that his proposal was "restraint and negotiations between Iran and America."
This comment led to an attack on the office of this member of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, and the pressure on him forced him to apologize the next day in an interview with the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
Source: Voice of America
