EU delivers ultimatum to Iran over TV jamming

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EU delivers ultimatum to Iran over jamming of western TV channels
23 March 2010
By Michael Purcell
scotsman.com

IRAN has been warned to stop jamming satellite broadcasts by the BBC and other international channels or face retaliatory action. Iran has disrupted foreign television stations transmitted by the same French-owned satellite that Tehran uses to beam its own channels into Europe and beyond. The warning came from the European Union, which also urged Iran to stop censoring the internet.

"The EU is determined to pursue these issues and to act with a view to put an end to this unacceptable situation," the bloc's 27 foreign ministers said in a statement adopted at a meeting in Brussels yesterday.

Western governments – and the Iranian opposition – consider as vital the free flow of impartial news into Iran after the regime's crackdown on dissenting local media following last June's disputed presidential elections. Dozens of Iranian journalists and bloggers have been imprisoned in recent months.

"If the Iranians are allowed to jam any channel and get away with it, others in other countries will begin to do the same. It's a recipe for chaos," Behrouz Afagh, the BBC World Service's director of the Asia and Pacific region, told The Scotsman.

Nearly 70 foreign radio and TV stations that transmit via the Eutelsat satellite to Iran were jammed on 11 February, the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. Foreign Secretary David Miliband said it betrayed the Iranian regime's fear "of their people hearing the truth about what's happening in their own country".

Jamming violates the agreements of the International Telecommunications Union, to which Iran is a party. But the Geneva-based UN body, which is pledged to support international broadcasting freedom, has no real enforcement power.

The EU is considering its own punitive measures, although it did not spell out what these may be. Diplomats, however, said one retaliatory response could be to ask Eutelsat to block Iran's broadcasting of satellite programming into Europe. Among eight state-run Iranian stations that use a Eutelsat satellite is Press TV, a 24-hour English-language channel which has an office in London. One of its shows is hosted by the Respect MP George Galloway.

The BBC's staff correspondent in Iran, John Leyne, was expelled last June after the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, while Iran's police chief, General Ismail Moghaddam, accused the BBC last month of being an arm of MI6, Britain's overseas intelligence agency. He warned of severe punishment for any Iranians who were in contact with the broadcaster.

Iran's ire is directed at the BBC's popular Farsi-language station, PTV, which launched in January last year. The paranoid Tehran regime branded PTV a tool of the UK government, which it accuses of trying to foment a velvet revolution in the Islamic Republic. Meanwhile, to counter Iran's internet censorship and eavesdropping on its people, the EU is considering a ban on European manufacturers exporting to Iran equipment that makes it possible to intercept e-mail and mobile phone conversations.

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If this report didn't have the comment 'paranoid Tehran regime' and the direct implication that western media is uncensored I might think it was shocking that these terrible Iranians were daring to block the BBC! Those devilish Persians!