Culture Minister: “We Don’t Interfere Unless it’s Necessary”

Iran’s culture minister has said that the Islamic Republic is currently enjoying its “best ever” environment for arts and culture, and that the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance has issued a record number of publishing permits over the last year. 

Speaking to the press on February 14, Reza Salehi Amiri, Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, said, “We do not cause trouble in any area including publishing. This does not mean no supervision, but the ministry believes that society is now mature enough to heed red lines.” 

According to a Fars News Agency [Persian link] report, Amiri was responding to a comment from a reporter who asked whether the ministry’s recent tendencies to “go easy” on publications was part of a larger campaign initiative ahead of this year’s presidential election. In particular, the reporter highlighted a recent slowdown in the “auditing” (official-speak for “censorship”) of publications. He also noted that Amiri’s predecessor Ali Jannati started his tenure with similar promises and claims. 

Amiri said that the present conditions were “the best ever” for exchanging views with “people of arts and culture.” By law, he added, his ministry is obligated to “supervise” publications, but the auditing of books “are now at their lowest level since the Islamic Revolution.” The reason for this, he said, was that people working in cultural industries understood what was permitted and what was off-limits. 

Amiri emphasized that most of the “red lines” were clear, and included challenges to the regime of the Islamic Republic regime, the supreme leader, or to the integrity of Iran. During the last Iranian calendar year, he said, the ministry issued more than 67,0000 permits for books, of which 45,000 were first editions. “Only 556 applications to publish had been subjected to auditing,” he said, “because either the content was violent or the [books] aimed to create divisions among ethnic groups or branches of Islam.” The Iranian calendar year comes to a close in about three weeks’ time. 

The minister did not mention the numerous books waiting for permits for publication, including The Colonel by prominent Iranian writer Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, which has been published in the United Kingdom and the United States, in both English and Persian. People living in Iran cannot purchase this and other books without a permit legally. 

When Hassan Rouhani began his term as president in 2013, he promised greater cultural freedom, and also specifically announced that Dowlatabadi’s book would be granted a permit “soon.” Almost four years on, the book remains unpublished in Iran.