Rana Rahimpour

Defiantly Reporting on a Censored State by Lina Kurdi

Death threats, rape threats, travel bans, asset freezes, and online smears are some of what Rana Rahimpour, 40, has faced since starting work for the BBC’s Persian service. The list grows longer if you factor in the harassment and intimidation aimed at her family. ‘It has been non-stop for the last 15 years,’ she says, and a direct result of reporting on Iran.

Rahimpour was born and raised in Iran. She has a bachelor’s degree in English-Persian translation from Islamic Azad University and another in accounting from Al- Zahra University. When she aspired to work for the UN, she chose journalism, believing it would be ‘a good gateway into humanitarian work’.

But while working as a broadcast journalist for an English language station in Iran, Rahimpour learned of the BBC’s plans to set up a Persian television channel and that they were recruiting 100 journalists ahead of the launch. She successfully applied and moved to London in 2008. The persistent and relentless harassment she has endured since has meant she has never been able to return.

The threats intensified during BBC Persian’s coverage of protests sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was detained by Iran’s morality police for wearing her headscarf loosely. ‘We had extra bulletins and were working longer hours’, says Rahimpour. ‘As the protests became more serious, and an existential threat to a degree for the regime, they increased the pressure on journalists covering the protests, both inside and outside the country.’

For Rahimpour, it meant the publication of an edited clip of conversations with her parents who live in Iran. On the same day it was published, Rahimpour’s car was broken into. Extensive checks carried out by British security services failed to determine whether the wiretap was instigated here in the UK or Iran. “We don’t know whether their house was bugged or their phone was bugged. There’s that sense of infringement of your privacy, so we can’t speak freely anymore on the phone and on Whatsapp.’

Rahimpour’s husband has been targeted too. ‘They ran a piece against him that accused him of being an economic spy who has been travelling in and out of Iran.’ Of course it was baseless, she says.

The ‘worst threat of all’ came via a message sent on social media. “Don’t feel that you are safe in London, if we feel the need, we will rape you and then behead you in front of your daughter.”

Rahimpour likens the ’emotional and psychological toll’ as being similar to that of reporters on the frontline. “War correspondents would go to the war zone for a couple of weeks or months, then they would come back to normal life, but in our case, the fight is intertwined in our daily lives, so it never ends,” she says.

Despite it all, Rahimpour vows to continue to report on Iran out of a sense of “duty” to the Iranian people and colleagues inside Iran who are risking their lives to help the Iranian people. “I feel if all of us are scared, then the dictators win,” she says.

Her colleague at the BBC, freelancer Sahar Zand, echoes the sentiment, “We as journalists must do our part and stand up to the bullies in government. It’s our job to speak out. If we don’t expose the injustices in Iran, no one else will.”

Iran is ranked 178 out of 180 in the world’s worst countries for press freedom in the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) World Press Freedom Index and comes in third after Eritrea and North Korea. Media there is mainly controlled by the government. Independent media outlets are frequently shut down, with journalists arrested and handed harsh sentences after unfair trials in revolutionary courts. ‘Iran has consistently been one of the worst countries for press freedom,’ says Fiona O’Brien, RSF UK Director. ‘It has always been a very difficult environment for journalists to operate in. Any contact journalists have with people outside of Iran is often manipulated by the Iranian government to make it look like it’s a challenge to national security that they’ve got spying links.

Jonathan Dagher, Head of the Middle East Desk at the RSF, explains,’ The free flow of information is dangerous for governments that get away with things because of censorship. They don’t want people to realise what is actually happening in Iran and this is why the Iranian government tries to suppress information both in Iran and outside of Iran.’

Rahimpour, who announced on Monday, 3 April 2023, that she was leaving BBC Persian, says the highlight of her career was an interview with Amini’s father. “No story has touched my heart the way that Mahsa Amini’s uprising did. I’ve always been very close to human rights issues in Iran, but as a woman covering the story of a woman who could have been my cousin, could have been my daughter, could have been me, had I not left Iran, was so close to home that I just couldn’t sleep.”

Although Rahimpour has left the BBC, she has not left journalism or the plight of Iranians. ‘I feel it’s time to go freelance so I can do more work and work with other organisations,’ she says, although nothing is settled. “I’m in negotiations. I’m just trying to figure out a way to do more for the men and women in Iran who have been fighting for freedom all these years.” The fight continues.