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Iranian Film Director Arrested for Controversial Movies
TEHRAN, Aug 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A prominent Iranian female movie director has been arrested by order of Tehran's revolutionary tribunal, the reformist
Hambastegi daily reported Thursday.
Tahimeh Milani was arrested Sunday "for yet unknown reasons," the paper said. The revolutionary court ordered her detention and transfer to prison.
The paper added that an official at the nation's culture ministry said her arrest was based on a "misunderstanding" but did not specify.
"In our opinion, the accusations leveled against Tahimeh Milani are based on a misunderstanding which we are trying to resolve.
"We hope to be able to announce her release as soon as possible," the unidentified official was quoted as saying.
According to the BBC's online service, Milani's arrest came a day after a reformist newspaper carried a lengthy interview with her about the new film and the period it covers.
It focuses on left-wing student groups that were active in the struggle against the former Shah's regime, but were suppressed by Islamic factions after the revolution in 1979, BBC added. Milani said that everything in the film was true.
Milani, who has strong feminist and political beliefs, is one of the best-known figures in the Iranian film world. She both writes and directs her own movies.
Her most celebrated work is probably the film, Two Women, which won acclaim both internationally and locally when it came out two years ago.
Her latest, The Hidden Half, currently playing in Tehran, reportedly focuses on the cultural revolution following the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Born in Tabriz, Iran in 1960, Milani graduated in architecture but embarked on a career in filmmaking, beginning with a screenwriting workshop in 1979. She apprenticed as script girl and assistant director on several films.
According to the daily, unconfirmed reports say Milani has been accused of "insulting the values of the Islamic revolution" in her movie.
At least 10 of her friends from the time had been executed, she said, while others had been given long jail sentences and many more had been driven out of the universities.
Milani is the latest in a long series of liberal figures to be arrested over the past 18 months.
The arrests are being seen as an attempt by the hardline judiciary to stem the advance of reform and repel what it sees as a cultural invasion aimed at undermining the foundations of the Islamic republic.
In furtherance of a conservative crackdown on elements they deem threats to the Islamic republic, Iran's supreme court on Monday upheld the 10-year prison sentence for a German embassy translator in Tehran for participating in an "un-Islamic" political conference in Berlin last year, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Iran's state radio announcement confirmed reports that the court upheld the jail term for 47-year-old Said Sadr, but did not say whether he had been arrested.
On Sunday, family members of Khalil Rostam-Khani, another translator with links to the German embassy in Tehran, announced he had his nine-year prison sentence cut to eight years in the same case.
"Mr. Rostam-Khani was arrested on Saturday at his house and was jailed," his family told AFP.
A former communist, the 46-year-old Rostam-Khani helped organize the April 2000 conference in Berlin, staged by a foundation with links to Germany's Green party, but did not attend the actual event.
Sadr, like other reformists with links to President Mohammad Khatami, attended the conference which conservatives in Iran deemed "un-Islamic".
The two men and eight others were given heavy jail terms by Tehran's revolutionary court but appealed their verdicts in January.
The rulings included 10-year jail terms for maverick journalist Akbar Ganji while other defendants were handed down sentences of four to nine years.
Tehran's revolutionary court said the meeting, which focused on the future of reforms in Iran after reformists won a parliamentary majority in last February's elections, was aimed at overthrowing Iran's clerical regime. All defendants denied the charge.
The conference, which was disrupted by the Iranian opposition-in-exile, was deemed "un-Islamic" in part because a man disrobed in protest and a woman danced with bare arms, AFP reported.
The event outraged Iranian conservatives and many reformers after film footage of the conference was shown on state television in Iran.
Khatami, the reformist president, who came to power in 1997 on a surge of demands for freedom, was engaged in a struggle for power in Iran against hardline conservatives, who see themselves as the guardians of orthodoxy.
In his election campaign Khatami, defending his reform policy, said, "We can't live as a closed country, free from the influence of the outside world."
"The original goals of the revolution were freedom, independence and the creation of an Islamic republic," he says. "But ideas change with time. Today, an Islamic republic means co-operation and compromise between religion and democracy. Today, the most important thing for people is freedom."
"The Iran we want should be one where there will be room for all the different viewpoints, for all ideologies, even those that oppose the President. They too must have the right to express themselves."
However, conservatives have repeatedly accused him over undermining Islamic values with his reform agenda.
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