Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders on Wednesday urged the UK government to better protect Iranian journalists being targeted with ‘chilling’ repression by Tehran.
The organisation’s call came just weeks after a journalist for an independent Iranian media outlet was stabbed outside his home in London, in an attack being probed by counter terrorism police.
RSF said almost 90 per cent of Iranian journalists surveyed had reported experiencing online threats or harassment, including death and rape threats, in the last five years.
Female respondents said they or their family members had been sent explicit images while also facing campaigns to damage their reputations.
‘Iran must stop targeting journalists,’ RSF UK director Fiona O’Brien said in a statement.
The impact of the harassment on journalists was ‘devastating’, the watchdog added, as it called on the UK government to ‘provide rapid response protection mechanisms for journalists facing serious threats’.
‘Three quarters of survey respondents said they had experienced psychological stress, anxiety or feelings of vulnerability as a result of threats and harassment,’ the report noted.
‘The UK should also establish clear legal pathways for journalists forced to flee their home countries to enter the UK,’ it added.
RSF urged the government to work with law enforcement agencies to ensure transnational crimes against journalists under UK jurisdiction were ‘systematically investigated and prosecuted’.
Iranian journalists working in the United States, France, Germany, Sweden, as well as the UK, were often subjected to intimidation, it said.
‘Exiled Iranian journalists have shown remarkable courage and resilience in continuing to report in the face of such threats, but far more must be done to support and protect them,’ O’Brien said.
The report documented ‘a chilling and far-reaching threat to fundamental freedoms’ that should act as a wake-up call to UK authorities and to ‘democracies worldwide’, she added.
Pouria Zeraati, a presenter for Iran International, needed hospital treatment for leg wounds suffered in the London attack on March 29.
The Iranian government has declared Iran International a terrorist organisation, but has denied any links to the incident.
Zeraati, 36, said the stabbing was a ‘warning shot’.
London’s Metropolitan Police has said two suspects went straight from the scene in southwest London to Heathrow Airport and left the UK ‘within a few hours’.
Detectives were considering whether ‘the victim’s occupation could have prompted the assault’.
The UK government last year unveiled a tougher sanctions regime against Iran over alleged human rights violations and hostile actions against its opponents in Britain.