Live television coverage of an Iranian soccer match was blacked-out because sections of the crowd were chanting anti-government slogans and waving green emblems in support of the country’s political opposition, it was claimed on Friday.
The premier league match between Esteghlal and Steel Azin took place at Tehran’s Azadi Stadium just hours after tens of thousands of green-clad protesters used the state-organized Quds Day anti-Israel demonstrations to voice their opposition to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is accused of stealing Iran’s recent election.
The game’s scheduled live TV coverage was disrupted apparently after bosses of the state broadcaster, Irib, learned of the presence of protesters inside the stadium.
Iranian Web sites said the match was initially broadcast for a few minutes in black-and-white without crowd noise to show that technical problems were being experienced. The transmission then cut back to a studio presenter who said that the problems had arisen because Irib had “sent only one camera to the stadium.”
Eventually, the match was shown nearly an hour late, again without sound and with close-up shots focusing solely on the pitch and editing out the 70,000 spectators.
The news Web site Mehr described the live broadcast failure as “unprecedented.”
Aziz Mohammadi, the head of Iran’s premier league, blamed it on Esteghlal’s refusal to agree to a 15-minute kick-off delay to give extra preparation time to cameramen who, he said, had been under added pressure because of the earlier coverage of Quds Day. That explanation, however, was dismissed by club bosses, who said Irib had cited “technical problems” throughout the match.
The Mizan Press Web site — linked to the opposition National Religious party — said the real reason was the presence of supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the reformist who says Ahmadinejad cheated him of victory in June.
“Following the self-motivated presence of the green wave in Azadi Stadium, Irib did not cover live the Esteghlal-Steel Azin match,” it wrote. “Irib’s lie about camera malfunction and receiving only black and white images from inside the stadium was uncovered an hour later by the color transmission using close-up and specially edited frames. In these images, the spectators were not shown at all.”
Suspicions that the broadcast was delayed deliberately were bolstered by reports from listeners who said they heard chants in support of Mousavi during a live radio broadcast of the game.
The incident also exposed the authorities’ sensitivity to expressions of dissent in sporting arenas, especially soccer, which has an avid following in Iran.
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