Iran state media under fire over distortion of Mursi’s speech

Iran’s state Radio and Television has come under fire for tampering with the speech of Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi during a summit of Non-Aligned States held in Tehran.

Critics said a translator for the Iranian media distorted President Mursi’s speech to make it fit with the Islamic Republic’s official propaganda discourse.

While covering Mursi’s speech, the official television network refused to translate the Egyptian president’s statements critical of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Iran is the Syrian regime’s main ally and provided it with both diplomatic and military support during the crisis.

Digarban website, which monitors conservative media in Iran, wrote that the interpreter of the state television, “in an unprecedented action,…falsified parts of Mursi’s speech by refusing to translate Mursi’s sever attack on the Syrian regime.”

Some websites close the Iranian regime, such as Jahan News and Asriran, published the Egyptian president’s speech without the part where he was criticizing Syrian President Assad.

Jahan News described President Mursi as an “emerging president” and described his talk about Assad as “extremist” and “irrational.”

When Mursi spoke about the Arab Spring countries and mentioned Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Syrian and Yemen, the translator replaced “Syria” with “Bahrain.”

Amid Mukadam, an Iranian media activist, told AlArabiya.net that he heard “Bahrain” mentioned three times in the Persian translation, when it was never mention in the original speech of Mursi.

Mukadam said the Persian interpreter “looked confused which means that he was intent on inserting some expressions in Mursi’s speech and deliberately used “al-Sahwa al-Islamiya” (Islamic Awakening) instead of “Arab Spring.”

”This would have never happened if he was not ordered to do so by higher authorities,” Maqdam added. “This is a blunt distortion of an official live speech delivered by a president and heard by the world and did not have any of those expressions.”

He explained that the distortion of Mursi’s speech demonstrated how the regime in Tehran was more concerned about how its people view issues than what President Mursi thinks and says.

The Iranian state television reportedly also altered remarks on Syria by the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and U.N. General Assembly President Nasser Abdul Aziz.