Iran is world’s biggest prison for women journalists - watchdog

Iran is the world’s biggest prison for women journalists, the international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Wednesday.

"Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reiterates its concern about the conditions in which journalists are being detained in Iran, especially Afarine Chitsaz of the daily newspaper Iran, a young woman arrested at the same time as three other journalists on 2 November," the group said in a statement.

In addition to Chitsaz, four other women journalists – Rihaneh Tabatabai, Roya Saberi Negad Nobakht, Narges Mohammadi and Atena Ferghdani – are serving jail terms ranging from one to twelve years and some are in poor health, RSF said.

With a total of 36 journalists and citizen-journalists currently detained, Iran is still one of the world’s five biggest prisons for media personnel and is ranked 173rd out of 180 countries in the 2015 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.