Iran shut down a newspaper after it published an expert’s opinion that the country’s true death toll could be 20 times greater than what is being reported.
Authorities closed down the Jahan-e Sanat newspaper after it quoted Iranian epidemiologist Mohammad Reza Mahboubfar, who accused the government of working to cover up actual statistics about total coronavirus infections and deaths, on Sunday. Mahboubfar called the Health Ministry numbers “engineered statistics,” according to the Associated Press.
“The administration resorted to secrecy for political and security reasons,” he said. Mahboubfar also questioned the timing of the first COVID-19 cases and claimed that the first confirmed infections were a month earlier than reported.
“I believe the numbers announced by the Health Ministry are 1/20th of the reality” of Iranians infected and dead, Mahboubfar said.
After Jahan-e Sanat published Mahboubfar’s remarks, the Media Supervisory Board of Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance issued a warrant to shut down the newspaper, its managing editor, Mohammad Reza Saadi, told the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.
The ruling Iranian regime has been accused of lying about the true scale of the pandemic since it began. In late April, authorities there arrested thousands of people who it alleged were “spreading rumors about coronavirus.”
“Our enemies are always hostile and have agents to further their wishes in our country, but we had a very good performance in combating coronavirus in comparison with countries that claim to be advanced. You can see what disaster the United States is stuck in,” said Brig. Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, the spokesman for Iran’s armed forces.
The Health Ministry’s official tally counts more than 328,000 cases of COVID-19 and some 18,600 deaths, but those figures contradict what experts, dissident groups, and even some elements within Iran’s own government have claimed.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran, a leading dissident group, said in a Sunday statement to the Washington Examiner that it has tallied more than 85,500 deaths associated with the coronavirus since the pandemic began.
“On daily basis and based on detailed reports the Iranian resistance has been exposing mullahs’ massive cover-up from onset of coronavirus pandemic in Iran. While devoting Iran’s resources to suppression, terrorism, belligerence and the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, the regime has refrained from providing the minimum resources [to] save the lives of millions of Iranian in this critical period, which has resulted in massive fatalities,” said Shahin Gobadi, a Paris-based spokesman with the group.
The NCRI also claims to have leaked documents that show the regime was aware of possible coronavirus cases back in January, nearly a month before officials reported the first case on Feb. 19. The documents are copies of mission reports from the government’s National Emergency Organization.
Global cases of the coronavirus are approaching 20 million, and worldwide deaths have surged to beyond 732,000. The U.S. has the most reported infections, making up about a quarter of confirmed cases.
