Siamak Pourzand
| Siamak Pourzand | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 1931 |
| Died | 29 April 2011 Tehran, Iran |
| Nationality | Iranian |
| Occupation | journalist and film critic |
| Spouse(s) | Mehrangiz Kar |
Siamak Pourzand (Persian: سيامک پورزند; September 1931 – 29 April 2011) was an Iranian journalist and film critic. He was the manager of the Majmue-ye Farhangi-Honari-ye Tehran—a cultural center for writers, artists, and intellectuals—and wrote cultural commentary for several reformist newspapers later shut down by the Iranian government. In 2001, he was imprisoned for his articles critical of Iranian leadership, a move condemned by numerous human rights and journalism organizations.
Siamak Pourzand began his career in journalism with the newspaper Bakhtar Emroz in 1952. In the 1960s and 70s, Pourzand served as an American correspondent for the newspaper Keyhan. His notable assignments included covering the funeral of John F. Kennedy as well as interviewing Richard Nixon. He also reported on Hollywood and became one of Iran's "best known film critics", writing for the French film journal Cahiers du cinéma.
Following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, however, Pourzand lost his job at Keyhan and began working at trade journals. Pourzand was reportedly "secular to the core" and viewed the new rulers of the Islamic Republic with suspicion. In the late 1990s, he began to write a series of articles critical to the government, placing them in opposition newspapers. Among them was a piece on the funerals of Dariush and Parvaneh Eskandari Forouhar, victims of Iran's 1998 "Chain Murders", in which a series of prominent dissidents were murdered in their homes by members of Iran's intelligence agency. Pourzand also reported the funeral live by telephone for a Los Angeles-based radio station.
In 2000, Pourzand's wife Mehrangiz Kar, also a critic of the Iranian government, was arrested for her participation in a conference at Berlin's Heinrich Böll Foundation titled "Iran after the elections", at which various reform proposals were debated; she ultimately served a 52-day prison term. Pourzand's own arrest soon followed. On 29 November 2001, days after reportedly seeing men following him on motorcycles, Pourzand was kidnapped by members of the Amaken, agents of Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prohibition of Vice, shortly after leaving his sister's apartment. On 7 December, one of his sisters was requested by government officials to bring him a change of clothes, but was reportedly told that his whereabouts were "none of her business".
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