RFI in Persian celebrates its 30th anniversary
RFI in Persian broadcasts to Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
RFI
Text by: Ehsan Manoochehri
8 mins
RFI's first Persian-language program aired on March 21, 1991, the first day of the Iranian New Year, Nowruz.
Since then, this radio program for Persian-speaking countries - Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan - has adapted to changes in usage.
Publicity
Read more
We are on March 21, 1991 in a small studio on the fourth floor of the Maison de la Radio.
On either side of the bay window that separates the studio from the control room, eyes are riveted on the clock which, given the impatience of those present, moves too slowly.
Everyone watches the 7 p.m.
The president of RFI, André Larquié, and all the management are there to kick off the radio program in Persian.
Finally, the red light comes on.
"
You listen to Radio France Internationale in Persian,"
announces Farzad Djavadi in a voice that is both hoarse and warm.
This program is now broadcast every evening on shortwave to Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan
”.
The journalist accompanies the suave voice of his colleague, Simine Chamlou, for a 15-minute newspaper in two voices.
The launches, sounds, papers, asphalt and briefs follow one another.
Words and sounds then take flight on the wings of short waves.
They are now walking the same path, in the mouth of Twitter, or the net of other digital messengers.
Scissors and glue
When RFI began broadcasting in Persian, no website existed.
Email and social media weren't invented.
Agency dispatches are printed by teleprinters on rolls of paper in several copies hung on the hallway wall, each going to cut out what interests him.
Correspondents and special envoys read their launches, papers and reports over the phone and everything is recorded on magnetic tapes which are edited with scissors and glue.
It often happens to see the journalists of the editorial staff looking in the interlacing of the discarded tapes, one or more words cut during the editing and inadvertently mislaid.
We are "talking to you about a time that those under [thirty] years old cannot know".
But it is also the time when international radios are still the almost exclusive source of free information for the Persian-speaking space where censorship is severely rife.
In Iran, the media are tightly controlled, international radio stations are jammed and intellectuals are subjected to constant repression.
Iranian journalists abroad are not spared.
The premises of the Persian-language editorial staff are twice subject to police inspections when anonymous calls warn that explosives have been placed there.
Some Iranian officials think they are threatening the editorial staff by clearly indicating that they have "
the power to obtain from the French government the closure of the editorial staff
".
In Afghanistan, the civil war is raging and the communist regime is living its last hours.
Tajikistan has just proclaimed its “sovereignty” and will soon sink into five years of civil war which will kill 50,000 people.
Thirty years of voice
Less than five months after the launch of the program in Persian, Chapour Bakhtiar, the last Prime Minister of the Shah of Iran, is assassinated in Suresnes.
The coverage of this event by special broadcasts mobilizing the whole team over a long period of time is a formative editorial test in many respects.
A year later, on September 17, 1992, Sadegh Sharafkandi, then secretary general of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, was assassinated in Berlin.
Three days earlier, he had been in the Persian editorial studio for the last interview of his life.
The editorial archives preserve very great voices of writers, poets, artists, intellectuals or civil society activists.
Many of them are now deceased, some during the wave of "serial assassinations" at the end of the 1990s. On the occasion of the 30 years of the Persian language at RFI, the editorial staff proposes to hear again on its site and its social networks 30 voices restored and dressed in the form of video.
In the living room of his apartment, on the sixth floor of a small tower in a residential area of the Afghan capital, the Persian editorial correspondent proudly displays the red RFI logo on the wall.
It is also his office.
The large satellite telephone, the tape recorder and other objects bearing the RFI mark are on display for all to see.
We are in 2002 and the new Afghan government has just been formed under the presidency of Hamid Karzai.
He claims to be an RFI correspondent in Kabul gives him "
a special status and has nothing to do with that of other media
".
For more than a decade, during the civil war and especially after the conquest of power by the Taliban in Kabul, he especially had to remain very discreet and almost invisible to preserve his life.
A stillborn career
The correspondent in Iran had a very short professional life: it ended before his first correspondence.
It is 1996, and it is the first time that a journalist has volunteered and insisted on becoming the correspondent of the Persian editorial staff.
He had studied journalism in the United States and worked in Tehran for a provincial newspaper.
We give it a try.
He goes to a press conference where Faraj Sarkohi, literary critic and well-known journalist, missing for 48 days, is to speak.
The Iranian authorities initially insisted that Faraj Sarkohi had left the national territory and was in Germany.
The Berlin authorities denied with the same assurance.
In fact, he had been arrested by the Iranian intelligence ministry at Tehran airport when he intended to travel to Germany to see his family.
After seven weeks of waiting Faraj Sarkohi is taken to a press conference to claim that at the last moment he changed his mind and went to Turkmenistan.
The short-lived "future correspondent" of the Persian editorial staff asks him to show his passport and the stamps which attest to this assertion.
At the end of the press conference, he is beaten up.
He gives up journalism to take care of a family business.
From listener to journalist-citizen
During the post-electoral uprising of 2009, the accelerated development of the means of communication turned the situation upside down.
Listeners become the main sources of information.
They are at the heart of events and, equipped with a simple telephone, photograph, film and tell the story live.
But their story, as precious and informative as it is, does not constitute "the information".
The senders are obviously witnesses, but above all actors.
They make the news, and by the simplicity and lightness of the technical means are also responsible for telling it.
To take advantage of this mass of data and transform it into information, it is essential to pass it through the sieve of journalistic verification.
The Multilingual Observers team was created with the secondment of a journalist from the Persian editorial staff to explore the mass of informative materials that former “consumers” who have become citizen journalists are now putting online.
This change, which has taken place in recent years thanks to the extraordinary development of the means of communication and the evolution of uses in this field, has led the editorial staff to re-examine and rethink their editorial offers and adapt to the practices and expectations of users.
Henceforth, the editorial staff is now devoted to the production and distribution of new digital editorial forms.
Digital festival
On the occasion of its 30 years and the Iranian New Year, the editorial staff organized a digital festival available on its site and its digital environments: there are three concerts, a photo exhibition, a retrospective of the interviews carried out during these three decades. , and many other content in text, sound, video format.
This digital festival invites you to listen to a Santour concert by Jalal Akhbari, master of Persian music, a lyrical singing concert by Anoucha Nazari, singer, and Sepand Dadbeh, composer and musician, and a piano concert for four hands given by Pari Barkeshli and Annick Chartreux.
Isabelle Eshraghi, photographer, exhibits her photos of Nowruz in video format and a series entitled
30 years, 30 voices
offers to listen to excerpts from some of the interviews carried out by the editorial staff during its three decades, restored and dressed in video.
Newsletter
Receive all international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
RFI
Media
Iran
our selection