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Chickens facing censorship in Iran

16 July 2012 13:57 (UTC +04:00)

APA reports quoting â€œThe Daily Telegraphâ€ that against a backdrop of lengthening food queues, Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam, the head of Iran’s law enforcement forces, has warned that films depicting scenes of chicken dinners could provoke the underprivileged classes to attack the rich.

"They show chicken being eaten in movies while somebody might not be able to buy it," Mr Ahmadi-Moghaddam, brother-in-law of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, told a law enforcement officers conference in Tehran. "Films are now the windows of society and some people observing this class gap might say that we will take knives and take our rights from the rich. IRIB [Iran’s state broadcaster] should not be the shop window for showing all which is not accessible. The warning is the latest sign of official alarm over the strains being caused by rampant inflation and international sanctions aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear programme, which the West suspects is intended to produce an atom bomb, despite Tehran’s denials. The country’s already creaking economy suffered a further blow this month when a EU boycott of Iranian oil sales took effect, at the same time as a fresh US embargo penalising countries that continued to buy Iran’s