Reporters Without Bordres
2003, a black year

42 journalists killed and a steep increase in other press freedom violations
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In Iran, the Iranian-Canadian photographer Zahra Kazemi was murdered in July. She was arrested while working on a report on students detained in the sinister Evin prison in Teheran after major demonstrations in June. Kazemi died while in detention. After initially trying to cover up the case, the authorities are now trying to obstruct the trial.
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In Iran, where the court system is in the hands of the conservatives, journalists are jailed without restraint, particularly those working in the very active reformist press. At least 50 were arrested, more than the previous year. Most of them were tried in secret and some spent several months in solitary confinement. In Syria, in a move demonstrating the problem of achieving reform, the correspondent for the pan-Arab Al-Hayat newspaper was detained for several months for writing about preparations for the war in Iraq. This "preventive » detention was seen as a warning to all Syrian journalists, who are closely watched by the government.
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Censorship is severe in Iran. The reformist press is rapped when it raises subjects such as the Kazemi case or the signing of the nuclear protocol. Thirteen newspapers were suspended for periods of up to five years by the judge Saïd Mortazavi in Teheran, major censor of the Iranian press.
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