Iranian authorities have arrested about 600 journalists since the country’s disputed presidential election in 2009, says a member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee.

Fars news agency, which is affiliated with Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards, quoted hardliner MP Javad Karimi Ghoddousi as saying that some 600 journalists had been arrested in Iran since the 2009 election, but that a “sedition against the Islamic Republic still exists.”

Following the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2009, which many Iranians regarded as fraudulent, Iran witnessed the largest mass protests, also known as the Green Movement, since the 1979 revolution. Millions of Iranians who had cast their votes for reformist candidates Mehdi Karroubi and Mir-Hossein Mousavi took to the streets.

The protests, which Iran’s conservatives often refer to as the “2009 sedition”, were followed by a severe crackdown by authorities, who arrested thousands of Iranians, including many politicians, intellectuals and journalists.

One journalist, Hengameh Shahidi, spoke out last week for the first time about the brutal treatment she endured while in prison. Writing on Iranian website Saham, she described how she was beaten, intimidated, held in solitary confinement and put under enormous pressure to make false confessions.

Since the revolution in 1979, the Islamic Republic has routinely cracked down on non-conformist journalists, who face a high risk of harassment, detention and torture for simply doing their job. The journalists are often detained on security charges, accused of spying or sedition.

In November 2015, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards arrested four journalists and a brother of a journalist for allegedly being part of an “infiltration network” conspiring with “hostile” Western governments. Four of them were sentenced to a total of 27 years in prison in April.

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