Last Saturday morning, journalist Ruhollah Zam was executed in Iran, which has drawn international condemnation according to state media reports. Ruhollah Zam's reporting abetted spur big anti-Iranian government protests.
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In June 2020, Ruhollah Zam, 47, was found guilty of "corruption on earth" or a case of espionage attempts to overthrow Iran's government and sentenced to death. On Tuesday last week, Iran's Supreme Court maintained the verdict soon before his execution through hanging.
From 2017 to 2018, Paris-asylum Iranian journalist Ruhollah Zam ran the Amad News site and coordinated a Telegram channel, which shares information about the anti-regime protests that shook Iran. In 2019, for an unclear reason, he returned and was arrested in Iraq by members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The last three years in Iran were rowdy. Ruhollah Zam primarily drew the Iranian government's fury for his role in a wave of protests, using his Amad News and Telegram to spread "embarrassing" information about Iranian officials and protests timings and locations.
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The protests started in Iran's second-largest city, Mashhad, but grown thrust and reach more people that joined in. When the demonstrations have been at their peak in 2018, the protests were flashed by corruption over the price of essential commodities but hurriedly converted into somewhat far larger, coming to encompass a wide range of people's frustrations with Iran's government.
These newcomers changed the tone of the demonstrations, blaming the Iranian government, led by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, for their flawed political system, which leads to poor economic performance.
Then the protests started scattering to towns and cities across Iran, and protests had been recorded "in nearly every province" in the country. And such rallies have been targeting not just the Rouhani presidency but the Islamic Republic itself. People were chanting, "Death to the dictator," referring to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and "Death to the Revolutionary Guard," referring to Iran's security forces.
Moreover, they have pointed out the government's aid for the Assad regime, asking why Iran is wasting funds there when there are problems at home.
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The rallies eventually subsided in January 2018 however remained amongst the largest the nation has seen since the 2009 Green Movement, which demanded democratic reforms.
At the moment, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, blamed the 2018 protests on the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia leaders. All three countries and a handful of others were mentioned in a filmed "apology," which very likely a coerced apology and Zam has made, shared by Iran's Tasnim News Agency after the journalist was arrested.
Ruhollah Zam's senior fellow Karim Sadjadpour at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace tweeted on Saturday that he was "reportedly lured to Iraq (from France), kidnapped, taken back to Iran, and tortured into confession. He leaves behind a wife and two daughters."
"With the execution of Roohollah Zam, Iranian authorities join the company of criminal gangs and violent extremists who silence journalists by murdering them," Committee to Protect Journalists program coordinator Sherif Mansour said in a statement Saturday. "This is a monstrous and shameful act, and one which the international community must not let pass unnoticed."
