Iranian media affiliated to the Islamic regime have been accused of using library images from different times and locations in Britain and other parts of the world to portray the UK riots as “the uprising of the oppressed against the British monarchy.”
Soon after the rioting broke out, the Iranian regime seized on the unrest to get back at the British government by condemning what it described as “the violent suppression of the political opposition and the oppressed.”
However, in recent days, Iran’s online community and blogosphere have shown that pictures published in the regime’s news agencies and daily newspapers were taken at different times and places.
Most were published by the semi-official Fars news agency, whose paymasters are the elite revolutionary guards, and Keyhan newspaper, which is under the direct control of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Pictures provided by Fars are widely used in other media groups across Iran.
An Iranian who blogs under the name Gomnamian has devoted significant time to demonstrating where some of the pictures used by Fars were published beforehand. Fars deleted some pictures once word spread across the Web.
Among the pictures is one of a man whose face is covered in blood, which the Daily Mail had published in September last year alongside a story about security plans ahead of a soccer match between Manchester United and Rangers.
Another photo used by Fars was taken from a 2009 Washington protest in support of the Palestinians.
One appeared to be from Chile, and featured a road sign in Spanish.
One image showed a street full of police, but was actually taken at the Notting Hill carnival in 2008.
A picture showing police on horseback was from the miners’ strike in 1984.
In reaction to the regime’s schadenfreude over the UK riots, the top British diplomat in Tehran, Jane Marriott, wrote a letter to the Iranian Foreign Ministry saying Britain would be happy to talk about human rights.
“I would remind you that the UK has a standing invitation to all UN special rapporteurs and has facilitated the visits of a number of these rapporteurs to the UK in recent years,” she wrote in the letter. “I urge the Iranian government to extend a similar courtesy to the dedicated UN special rapporteur for the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ahmed Shaheed, to enable him to address the international community’s grave concerns about ongoing human rights violations within Iran.”
Iran announced last month that it would not permit the UN special rapporteur assigned with investigating its record of human rights to enter the country.
Iran’s opposition has attacked the regime for its portrayal of the UK riots, saying it is deliberately making them appear to be protests against the British monarchy as a tit for tat against the UK government for its criticism of human rights violations in Iran over the past years.
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