Guardians of Thought: Limits on Freedom of Expression in Iran

In Iran it is never clear whether what can be said, written or filmed today will be cause for financial ruin, arrest or other punishment tomorrow. Guardians of Thought, which primarily covers the period 1989-1993, examines the various mechanisms of state control of expression and presents more than sixty individual cases (and one group case involving 161 people) of Iranian writers, filmmakers, journalists and intellectuals who have been imprisoned, prosecuted or otherwise punished for the content of their work or whose work has been banned and censored. The breadth of censorship goes well beyond the cases examined here, these only serve to illustrate tactics of direct and often violent pressure by vigilante groups, of defamation campaigns, of formal censorship, and of the power play between different pressure groups within the ruling elite.