Mousavi Statement about Closing of Newspaper

This is a new statement from Mousavi:

The Green Word newspaper (Kalemeye Sabz) obtained a permit in February of 2009, and the first issue came out May 18th, 2009. On June 22nd, judiciary officials raided the office and although they had no permit to permanently close down the newspaper, it has not been published since. There were rumors that the newspaper would resume publication. But last night, Mousavi went to the head office and spoke about why this will not be the case:

I know how hard it is on the staff of a newspaper to see their publication closed down. But retreating is not always bad and does not always mean regret. Sometimes we step back to look at other possible paths.

After analyzing the costs and the benefits, our friends decided together not to resume publication. But of course, the fact that Kalemeyeh Sabz will not be published does not mean we will stop our activities and this means that we require innovative media that will reflect the views of this movement within frameworks that are beneficial to the country.

In the absence of a media that has the country’s best interests at heart, outlets like VOA and the BBC become the primary news outlets. It is natural that such outlets will have the best interests of their own country at heart.

In the process of the elections and the aftermath, innovative methods were used to spread information and while one path was closed, a hundred opened. The important thing is that now, everyone in this movement feels the need for a media and if we can keep this feeling alive in the people, in the future we may be able to find new ways of creating one.

The suspension of Kalemeyeh Sabz can be considered temporary, because, eventually, everyone’s voice needs to be heard. The real danger comes when we shut all possible routes of disseminating information, and bring down the establishment’s capability to accept criticism and thus add to an explosive circumstance.

They can not erect a wall around the country in the world we live in today. If the environment is not opened up, we will be left behind and we will be faced with a slew of new problems. In the past, it may have been possible to run the country without any links to the outside, but now, with the spread of technology and communication, such a thing is impossible.

From the days of the constitutional revolution onwards, there’s been a gap between intellectuals and the people. Intellectuals attended to things which were far from the everyday needs and worries of people. But recent events show that this gap is becoming more narrow.

There is a problem with the worldview of our intellectuals and politicians and that is that by emphasizing certain values, they leave many other valuable perspectives ignored. This is while in the everyday lives of our people, these values are not separated. [In the lives of our people] These value live together and they want to have them all. Iranian society is like the Greek god, Venus, who can bring together things which seem to be going in different directions. Our people can be saddened by the death of Neda Agha Soltan, the people of Gaza and others throughout the world.

In the green movement, we see this coming together of different values and all of those who have committed to this movement try to bring the best of their beliefs to the table and this is a path we must continue in the future.

Extreme slogans are because of anger. It is to our benefit to suggest slogans which are within the capacity of our country and to stay away from slogans which are rash and inconsistent with the conditions we face in the country.

We must not allow the events of the past few months to create pessimism about the revolution. It is obvious that those media outlets which are the voices of this or that power, are forced to defend the interests of their own country, even if they are broadcast in Persian. And through their outlets they will try to sow the seeds of hate towards the entire past thirty years, and they will even try to go after the efforts of our people in the great, historic holy war [Iran-Iraq war] and unfortunately, the policies of our own media is in line with the foreign media outlets and the situation that has been created for Kalemeyeh sabz today is a proof of this.