World Press Freedom Day: Kasra Naji shares his story

Iran has been waging a campaign of harassment and persecution against the journalists of the BBC Persian in London and their families in Iran. Here's my story:

When the doctor went to visit my dying father in Tehran, he mistook him for me. “Have you come at last, Kasra?”, my ninety-six-year old father asked, so desperate to see me one last time. He held on to life for months, hoping against hope, that I would appear by his bedside to say goodbye. I was so eager to go back – and this was 2012 when things were not as bad as now – that I telephoned contacts in the Ministry of Islamic Guidance, which is in charge of journalists in Iran, to ask if it might be possible. They said we have no problem but we can’t speak for the others – by which they meant the intelligence services. It was a clear warning.

For years, every time my family and I saw my father, as the departure date grew close, he would get increasingly agitated and finally break down in tears, saying this was the last time we would meet. My young son had to hear this and it was traumatic every time. When I first started work in BBC Persian TV, my wife and son went to Tehran in 2009 to see my father without me and it was not lost on him or my extended family that this was the shape of things to come.

There was one more family reunion in Turkey – my father already so fragile he had to travel in a wheelchair. The whole time we were all haunted by the pending moment of separation. One small joy was watching my elderly father’s delight when he video-skyped his sister in the United States. The internet bandwidth in Tehran wouldn’t allow him to do this. His face lit up with joy at seeing her and astonishment at what technology could deliver.

When my father died in 2012, we held a memorial with friends in London. There is no custom for how to mourn in exile – the dislocation is profound at moments like this. Those who came had their own stories to share of loved ones dying and not being able to attend the funerals.

All my colleagues have been through the same and much worse. Some watched their parents die on Skype, others had their children threatened in London. At least one colleague received threatening messages from Iran so serious that counter terrorism police had to put him under protection. One former colleague was jailed and another had her sister imprisoned for 17 days to pressure her to leave the BBC. Family members have been sacked from jobs, prevented from travelling and repeatedly interrogated and threatened. 152 of us have suffered from an asset freeze, which affects the whole family. We live with the constant threat of a conviction for ‘conspiracy against national security’ just for doing our job as journalists.

On a daily basis we experience intense abuse on social media, and this is especially bad for female colleagues who are targeted by a pernicious sexualised form of trolling and fake news. I have appeared photoshopped online taking fistfuls of cash from Saudi officials. I have been abused as a traitor so many times and for so long that my son, when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, once announced that he wanted to be a traitor like his dad.

The persecution by Iran has to stop. One day I hope to visit my father’s grave which I have only seen in photographs.