January 12, 2003	Sunday	Ziqa'ad 8, 1423

TEHRAN, Jan 11: Iran’s conservatives have called for a nationwide strike on Sunday to protest the publication of a 65-year-old US cartoon which they say insulted the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

A special court closed the Hayat-i-Nau daily on Saturday for printing the cartoon deemed insulting to the founding father of the Islamic republic, the state IRNA news agency said, while another reformist paper was also banned.

Angered by the cartoon, theology teachers announced the strike for Sunday, in what amounted to the latest salvo in the struggle between Iran’s conservatives and reformists.

In a statement read on television, the powerful Association of Theology Teachers in the religious city of Qom, just south of Tehran, said divinity schools would be closed on Sunday for mass protests.

On Wednesday, Hayat-i-Nau printed a caricature published in US papers in 1937 showing former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945) pressing his thumb to the head of a US Supreme Court justice.

However, hardliners felt the justice — shown as an elderly bearded man dressed in a long black robe — bore a resemblance to the revered late leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution and mounted an aggressive campaign to have it shut down.

Hundreds of people demonstrated against the daily in Qom on Friday, while in Tehran scores of demonstrators gathered in front of the paper’s offices.

The hardline judiciary also shut down the Bahar daily — considered close to reformist President Mohammad Khatami — which had only started publishing again two weeks ago after first being suspended more than two years ago, pending a final decision.

Last spring, the paper, owned by Khatami’s press department head, was suspended for six months.

As the conservatives turned up the heat, a representative of newspaper editors on the official Press Surveillance Commission said the cartoon in Hayate No was being played up to further undermine the battered reformist movement.

“Some are seeking to create tensions to justify actions against reformist newspapers,” journalist Issa Saharkhiz told AFP.

Saharkhiz said he suspected the conservatives were trying to intimidate Khatami against pushing through legislation aimed at stripping conservative-dominated institutions of some of their powers.

“In shutting the papers, they want to cut all ties between the reformists and the electorate so they can limit the participation in municipal elections on Feb 28 and show that the reformists and President Khatami have lost their popularity,” he said.

Prior to the court ban, Hayat-i-Nau had already apologized and voluntarily suspended publication until Monday to try and calm the storm.

Ironically, the newspaper is managed by Hadi Khamenei, a leading reformist MP on the other side of the political spectrum from his brother, Iran’s current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Hadi Khamenei was beaten two years ago by Islamic extremists during a political meeting in Qom.

Iran’s judiciary, a bastion of hardliners, have stepped up pressure on reformist papers in recent years, and in just over two years some 90 publications have been ordered to close down.

Many have since reappeared, only with different titles.

MUSIC BANNED: Police in southern Iran have announced a ban on playing any kind of music in public, even on car stereos, the official IRNA news agency said on Saturday.

“According to Iran’s penal code, playing authorised or unauthorised music either loudly or low is prohibited in cars, shops and taxis,” IRNA quoted the police information centre in Fars province as saying.

Music had made something of a comeback in recent years as social restrictions became more relaxed following the election of moderate President Mohammad Khatami in 1997.

Concerts for officially sanctioned groups are frequently held and young motorists can often be heard blasting out the latest U.S. or European pop tunes available on pirated tapes and CDs or via the Internet.

But the concerts are largely tepid affairs, with audience members prohibited from dancing and drivers are occasionally pulled over and fined for playing their music too loudly.

DEATH PENALTY: An Iranian court has sentenced a teenager to death by hanging after he was convicted for a third time of drinking alcohol, the state newspaper Iran said on Saturday.

The 19-year-old man was arrested when he appeared at a police station in southern Tehran to inquire about two of his friends who had recently been arrested.

Police noticed that the man, whose first name was given as Davoud, had been drinking alcohol and immediately charged him.—AFP / Reuters