The British government on Friday accused Iran of issuing death threats against journalists based in the United Kingdom and for this reason summoned the Iranian charge d’affaires, the diplomatic chief said. “I summoned the Iranian Chargé d’Affaires today after journalists working in the UK received death threats from Irantweeted British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly.
“We do not tolerate threats or intimidation from foreign nations against people living in the UK“, he added. The summons comes as a London-based Persian-language television channel – Iran International – reported earlier this week that two of its journalists working in Britain had received death threats from the Revolutionary Guards (Tehran’s ideological army).
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According to the channel’s ownership group, the scale of the threats prompted London police to “officially inform the two journalists that these threats posed an imminent, credible and significant risk to their lives and the lives of their families“. Iran International particularly covers the protests that have taken place in Iran since the death in mid-September of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who died three days after her arrest in Tehran by the morality police who accused her of have broken the Islamic Republic’s dress code, which specifically mandates the wearing of veils for women.
Dispute suppressed in blood
The protest – on a scale the country had not seen for three years – was bloodily suppressed, with nearly two hundred dead, according to the count of an NGO based outside Iran. Dozens of journalists have also been arrested in the country. But the Iranian authorities accuse London of hosting these Persian channels, which are hostile to it and cover the demonstrations widely. They assessed on Wednesday that Britain was seeking to destabilize the Islamic Republic and was involved in a way “obvious“in”propaganda» pro-protests.
In early October, the Iranian Foreign Ministry summoned the British ambassador in Tehran to protest against “British Foreign Office interference in Iran’s internal affairs“. The announcement of the Iranian Chargé d’Affaires’ summons to London comes as British police announced on Friday that they had set up a “protection planfor an Iranian wrestling champion living in Scotland, Melika Balali, who, according to her, also received threats from the Iranian authorities.
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Melika Balali, 22, who has been an outspoken activist for women’s rights in Iran since she left the country a year ago, has publicly voiced her support for Iranian protesters. “They tried to find out where I live and who I train withshe said in a BBC interview broadcast on Thursday.
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