LONDON: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Thursday called on Iran to release a journalist serving an 18-month sentence in a notorious Tehran prison for giving an interview to the BBC.
Hassan Fathi, a freelance columnist and former editor of the Iranian daily Ettelaat, is an inmate at Evin Prison. His jail term began on May 6 after he lost an appeal against his 2018 conviction, the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported.
Fathi told the UK-based Iran International television channel that he was arrested on May 26, 2018 after he talked to BBC Persian Television about the re-election of President Hassan Rouhani. The Revolutionary Court of Tehran charged him with “spreading lies and disrupting public opinion,” and released him on bail in June 2018, he said.
The Tehran Appeals Court rejected his final appeal on May 2 this year and ordered him to begin his sentence, according to HRANA.
BBC Persian condemned the continuing attempts by the Iranian authorities to suppress freedom of speech.
“The long and continuing campaign of harassment against BBC Persian by the Iranian authorities has been extended to other international media outlets and, in the case of Hassan Fathi, to independent analysts and contributors,” a BBC Persian spokesman told Arab News. “These attempts to stifle free expression were condemned in an unprecedented joint statement at the UNHRC (United Nations Human Rights Council) in March of this year.”
The CPJ urged the Iranian authorities to release Fathi immediately and drop the charges against him.
“Iranian authorities must stop their absurd practice of imprisoning journalists solely for speaking to foreign media outlets, especially during a pandemic when any jail term could be a potential death sentence,” said Sherif Mansour, the organization’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator.
Many human-rights groups have condemned the Iranian government for failing to protect inmates from COVID-19 during the pandemic and urged it to release political prisoners. Amnesty International, for example, called on the “Iranian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release all prisoners of conscience.”
Conditions in many of Iran’s prisons fall well short of international standards. They are overcrowded, poorly ventilated, have limited hot-water facilities and are infested with insects, making them breeding grounds for the coronavirus.
Press-rights group urges Iran to release journalist jailed for BBC interview
https://arab.news/b3yfj
Press-rights group urges Iran to release journalist jailed for BBC interview
- BBC Persian condemned the continuing attempts by the Iranian authorities to suppress freedom of speech
- The Revolutionary Court of Tehran charged Fathi with “spreading lies and disrupting public opinion”
To infinity and beyond: Grendizer’s 50 years of inspiring Arabs
- 50 years after its creation, the Grendizer anime series continues to capture Arab imagination
- Arab News Japan speaks to creator Go Nagai, Middle Eastern fans and retells the story behind the UFO Robot tasked with protecting our planet
LONDON: Few cultural imports have crossed borders as unexpectedly, or as powerfully, as Grendizer, the Japanese giant robot that half a century ago became a childhood hero across the Arab world, nowhere more so than in Saudi Arabia.
Created in Japan in the mid-1970s by manga artist Go Nagai, Grendizer was part of the “mecha” tradition of giant robots. The genre was shaped by Japan’s experience during the Second World War, and explored themes of invasion, resistance and loss through the medium of science fiction.
But while the series enjoyed moderate success in Japan, its true legacy was established thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East.
The anime “UFO Robot Grendizer” arrived on television in the region in 1979, dubbed into Arabic and initially broadcast in Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war. The story it told of the heroic Duke Fleed, a displaced prince whose planet had been destroyed by alien invaders, struck a chord with children growing up amid regional conflict and occupation by Israel.
Its themes of defending one’s homeland, standing up to aggression and protecting the innocent were painfully relevant in the region, transforming the series from mere entertainment into a kind of emotional refuge.
Much of the show’s impact came from its successful Arabization. The powerful Arabic dubbing and emotionally charged voice-acting, especially by Lebanese actor Jihad El-Atrash as Duke Fleed, lent the show a moral gravity unmatched by other cartoons of the era.
The theme song for the series, performed by Sami Clark, became an anthem that the Lebanese singer continued to perform at concerts and festivals right up until his death in 2022.
By the early 1980s, “Grendizer” had spread across the Middle East, inspiring fandoms in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and beyond. For many, it was not only their first exposure to anime, it also delivered lessons on values such as justice and honor.
Grendizer was so influential in the region that it became the subject of scholarly research, which in addition to recognizing the ways in which the plight of the show’s characters resonated with the audience in the Middle East, also linked the show’s popularity to generational memories of displacement, particularly the Palestinian Nakba.
Half a century later, “Grendizer” remains culturally alive and relevant in the region. In Saudi Arabia, which embraced the original version of the show wholeheartedly, Manga Productions is now introducing a new generation of fans to a modernized version of the character, through a video game, The Feast of The Wolves, which is available in Arabic and eight other languages on platforms including PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch, and a new Arabic-language anime series, “Grendizer U,” which was broadcast last year.
Fifty years after the debut of the show, “Grendizer” is back — although to a generation of fans of the original series, their shelves still full of merchandise and memorabilia, it never really went away.
