Iran president criticised over remarks on music concerts
TEHRAN: A cultural row in Iran over concerts being cancelled was reignited on Sunday when the country’s judiciary chief appeared to criticise President Hassan Rouhani’s liberal remarks on the subject.
Music and other public performances are a sensitive matter in the country given concerns among religious conservatives about creeping “Westernisation”. But there is a desire from other groups, particularly younger citizens, for greater artistic freedom.
Permissions are tightly controlled by the culture ministry but even officially approved events have recently been halted at short notice. Organisers, artists and reformist media have blamed local governors and other officials for stopping the events.
Rouhani, addressing the subject on June 13, said that if a concert is officially approved and people buy tickets their plans should not be disrupted.
“Such interventions are a violation of people’s rights,” he said.
“When a legal permit is issued it is absolutely wrong for other bodies to intervene when they have no legal right to do so. If the judiciary wants to act in this regard it should have legal justification.” However, Sadegh Larijani, who heads up the judiciary responsible for prosecuting crime and administering courts, seemed to undercut Rouhani in a speech on Sunday attended by the president. “I was sorry to hear somewhere a cleric say that banning these concerts was against the people’s rights,” said Larijani, who like Rouhani is also a cleric.
“This is really surprising. One of the rights of the people is that things should not be against rules.”
Having said the issue had been overblown by the media, given nine concerts out of 300 had been stopped since late March, Larijani went further in what seemed to be thinly-veiled criticism of Rouhani.
“Second and more important is that some executive officials of the country have an improper understanding and they say that if we have given a permit then no one has the right to revoke it,” Larijani said. “Well, this is wrong. The judiciary has responsibilities regarding forbidden conduct. Revoking of permissions is dependent on the law.”