NOVEMBER 5, 2008
Shahrvand Emrouz
CLOSED
Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance shut down the moderate weekly magazine Shahrvand Emrouz on November 5, saying that the magazine had breached the terms of its licensing agreement.
Mohammed Hussein Safarhandi, minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, told Fars News, a privately owned news Web site, that the magazine had been registered when it launched in March 2007 as a magazine to cover “culture, economy, and sports,” but that it had breached its registration by covering political issues.
Mohammed Quchani, editor-in-chief of Shahrvand Emrouz, told Fars News that according to the terms of the registration, the magazine was only required to fill 51 percent of its pages with culture, economy, and sports stories and could fill the rest with whatever it wanted. He denied that the magazine had breached the terms.