Morteza Nikoubazl / Reuters, file

A guard stands watch at Tehran's Evin Prison in 2006. A new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists says that Iran has cracked down harshly on reporters ahead of the June presidential election. The group says most of those jailed are held at Evin, where at least three journalists have died in the past four years.

Iran has launched a campaign to intimidate and imprison journalists ahead of the June 14 presidential election, according to a new report from a New York-based advocacy group.

The wave of arrests began on Jan. 27, when authorities detained at least 14 journalists affiliated with reformist publications, according to the report, released Wednesday by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Another 23 journalists had been arrested by early March, it said.

An April 15 audit by the group found that at least 40 journalists were behind bars as part of what it called “the government’s continuing determination to silence independent coverage of public affairs.”

Michael Stuparyk / Toronto Star via Getty Images, f

Hossein Derakhshan, shown in Canada in 2006, was a blogger who tried to help fellow Iranians create their own blogs. He has been held at Tehran's Evin Prison since November 2008 and has been tortured and kept for long periods in solitary confinement.

Charges against them included insulting the president, spreading anti-Iranian propaganda, and in one case, “waging war against God.”

Intimidation of journalists -- including beatings, long periods in solitary confinement and denial of family visits and health care -- has had a chilling effect on the free flow of information, the report says, noting that government has blocked “millions” of websites.

Iran has also recently banned some reformist publications and arrested their leaders.

A particularly harsh crackdown on dissenting voices began in March, after Iranian Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi announced that 600 Iranian journalists were part of an anti-government network and that many were being arrested to "prevent the emergence of sedition prior to the elections," the report says.

Farideh Farhi, a University of Hawaii scholar who has written extensively about Iran, said the arrests are part of an effort to disrupt links between reporters inside Iran and their Farsi-speaking counterparts abroad, the report says.

The effort may stem from the 2009 election, when observers representing the candidates passed on reports of fraud to local reporters, who then relayed the information to colleagues outside the country, the report says, adding that those links are likely to be broken during the coming election.

Raheb Homavandi / Reuters, file

Iran's Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi, right, announced in March that 600 Iranian journalists were part of an anti-government network and that many were being arrested to "prevent the emergence of sedition prior to the elections."

 “The intent,” Farhi says in the report, “is to make sure that reporters inside Iran will hesitate to answer their phones or Skype when Persian-speaking reporters based outside of Iran call to figure out what's going on.”

There is evidence that the tactics have worked. Reporters inside Iran are careful what they say, even in telephone calls, and may be reluctant to write stories critical of the government.

The situation has gotten markedly worse under the rule of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the report said.

In 2004, the last full year of reformist President Mohammad Khatami’s term, the group said its annual prison census documented just one jailed journalist. In December 2009, after a disputed election returned Ahmadinejad to office, 23 imprisoned journalists were documented. Surveys since then have consistently shown 35 to 50 journalists behind bars at any given time, the report says.

Under Ahmadinejad’s rule, at least three journalists have died in prison and many more have been tortured, while at least 68 have fled into exile, the group said.

An attempt to get comments from Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, which must be contacted by email, was unsuccessful.

As of Wednesday night in Tehran's time zone, Iran’s state news agency had not mentioned the report.

The semi-official Fars News Agency, however, has previously reported on research by the Committee to Protect Journalists. A December article focused on the finding that Turkey had jailed more journalists, 49, than any other country that year. The article did not mention that the second-highest number of journalists, 45, were jailed in Iran.

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• Negotiator to run against Ahmadinejad
• Diplomat: US, Iran still 'a long way apart'
• Read more Iran coverage from NBC News

PALERMO, Sicily -- Italian authorities arrested 37 people accused of involvement in the Sicilian Mafia, including the mayor of a town on the island, police said on Monday.

The arrests, on charges including organized crime and extortion, were ordered by the Palermo anti-Mafia office to tackle what police said was a network to control businesses in towns around Sicily's capital.

Among those arrested was the mayor of Montelepre, a town of 6,000 famous as the home of 1940s "Robin Hood" bandit leader Salvatore Giuliano, as well as a livestock breeder who police said was the head of the ring.

Anti-Mafia prosecutor Francesco Messineo told reporters the investigation had revealed a concerted attempt to influence local politics. "Here we have two municipal governments ... that have been the subject of strong Mafia contamination," he said.

Italy has long struggled against the ingrained influence of mafia organizations whose operations are estimated to constitute up to 10 percent of gross domestic product.

Italy's main crime groups -- the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, Calabria's 'Ndrangheta and the Camorra from the southern city of Naples -- have a total annual income of $151 billion, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Last week Italy made its biggest confiscation of Mafia assets in history, seizing dozens of green-energy companies and other assets worth a total of $1.69 billion.

Related:

Italy cops arrest mozzarella kind over Mafia links

16 judges held in Italy Mafia bust; $1 billion in assets seized

Ashwini Bhatia / AP

Exiled Tibetan Buddhist monks walk past a banner of photos of Tibetan protesters as they participate in a candlelit vigil organized by the Tibetan parliament in exile in Dharmsala, India, on Thursday.

Chinese authorities detained 70 people in ethnically Tibetan areas Thursday in a bid to crack down on the gruesome spectacle of people setting themselves on fire to protest Chinese rule, state media said.

The operation, the largest of its kind yet reported by Beijing, is part of an intensifying effort to quell the fiery protests. It comes on the heels of a documentary released in China that blames Westerners, particularly Voice of America, for encouraging people to set themselves on fire and then treating those who do as heroes.

Nearly 100 people have set themselves alight since 2009 to protest Chinese rule, and most of them have died from their injuries.

Twelve of the 70 people detained Thursday were officially arrested in connection with self-immolation cases in what China calls the Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province deputy police chief Lyu Bengqian said, according to state media.

Lyu is head of a special police team investigating self-immolation cases. He said efforts would be stepped up to investigate the protests and to "seriously punish" anyone seen as inciting them.

China blames the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader in exile, as well as the West for the increase in self-immolations.

The U.S. State Department has been critical of the recent arrests.

In her Feb. 1 news briefing, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland criticized China's Tibet policies, in particular the heavy sentencing in January of a Tibetan monk and his nephew, who were charged with inciting eight people to set themselves on fire.

"We continue both publicly and privately to urge the Chinese government at all levels to address policies in Tibet -- in Tibetan areas -- that have created tensions and that threaten the distinct religious, cultural and linguistic identity of the Tibetan people."

On Wednesday, Voice of America shot back at China's assertion that it had encouraged Tibetans to set themselves on fire.

"That is totally false," Voice of America Director David Ensor said in a news release. "We do report these tragic stories; we do not encourage these self-immolations, that is wrong."

CCTV, the Chinese state broadcaster, produced and aired a documentary that pointed fingers at Voice of America, which is the U.S. government's official broadcaster overseas.

The program showed a Tibetan man in a hospital bed who allegedly attempted to self-immolate.

Apparently prompted to explain why he had attempted to light himself on fire, the man said, "I did it after watching VOA, I saw the photographs of self-immolators being commemorated. They were treated like heroes."

The documentary also sensationally accuses VOA of employing secret codes to send messages to people inside Tibet.

"That is one of the more amazing parts of the CCTV report," Ensor said. "That suggestion is totally absurd."

VOA is asking that both CCTV and the China Daily retract their reports.

Related:

Documentary alleges US broadcaster incites self-immolations

Resounding silence as Chinese dissident wins US award

China's Public Security Bureau

China's Public Security Bureau's graphic announcement about the crackdown on illegal immigrants in Beijing. The Chinese characters say: 'Illegal immigrants, illegal residence, illegal work' and the fist graphically spells out the crackdown.

BEIJING – China has launched a 100-day crackdown against illegal immigration and illegal employment in the wake of a high-profile sexual assault case involving a British national who was videotaped allegedly attempting to force himself on a Chinese woman.

The disturbing three-minute video surfaced on the Internet last week and has been viewed more than 8 million times on the Chinese video-sharing website youku.com, provoking outrage across China’s web-sphere.

The clip of the May 8 incident shows the 25-year-old British man standing over a sobbing  Chinese woman on a street median before a Good Samaritan came to her rescue.  Following a brief scuffle, the attacker was then shown lying unconscious on the street before he is suddenly kicked by another nearby bystander – much to the approval of netizens who commented online.

Police arrived soon afterward and detained the man, who was reportedly intoxicated, for sexual assault. He is allegedly still in detention, pending an investigation.   

Officials from China’s Public Security Bureau told NBC News that their summer-long campaign against illegal immigration and illegal employment is simply an enforcement of procedures already in place and wouldn’t comment on whether this crackdown was the result of the attack.

The tactics the Public Security Bureau announced they would use are similar to the ones employed in 2007 and during the run-up to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Namely, spot checks of foreigners in Beijing neighborhoods frequented by expatriates, like the Sanlitun bar district and the university district of Haidian.

Police will also create a special hotline so the public can report suspicious foreigners. Security officials will also conduct door-to-door checks of homes owned or rented by foreigners to check visas and housing permits. Chinese state television, CCTV, also quoted Professor Xiang Dang of the Chinese People's Public Security University as saying that the National People’s Congress Standing Committee was also considering creating special detention centers to hold foreigners found without valid visas.

‘Foreigner vs. Chinese’
All of this is part of a multi-prong campaign ostensibly to rein in immigrants who commit crimes, have over-stayed their visas or work illegally in the mainland.

Despite the claims that this was merely a step-up of routine procedures, the tone of the announcement of the campaign – posted on China’s Twitter-like service Weibo – suggests a renewed urgency on the part of Chinese police.  In the announcement, a fist is seen smashing down on three words: Illegal immigrants, illegal residence, illegal work.

News of the campaign was unfortunately greeted with some anti-foreigner stereotyping – a common “foreigner versus Chinese” practice lamented in a column in the Chinese newspaper Global Times. 

But the police crackdown was generally seen as a positive development online. On Weibo one user wrote: “[The campaign] should have happened earlier! If we don’t do this, there will be more cases of foreigners raping Chinese girls!”

Another user, however, noted, “In fact, we don’t need this campaign now. Any foreigner who has seen the video or heard about this incident will behave. That’s the best lesson.”

Throughout the day on Tuesday, “illegal foreigner” was a Top 10 trending topic on Weibo.

But missing from much of the public discussion online was the fact that the Briton believed to have sparked this new campaign was in China on a valid tourist visa.

Growing issue: illegal immigration
Though the timing of the Public Security Bureau’s campaign suggests a desire to associate the video with a toughening-up on street crime committed by foreigners, the focus of the campaign –checking documentation of foreigners – seems to be centered more on dealing with illegal immigration.

A Global Times article on the crackdown noted that China rounded-up about 20,000 illegal immigrants last year and – just like the United States – had no idea just how many were still in the country.

“It's very difficult for China to deal with the problem,” the Global Times wrote. “China lacks experience, hasn't made full preparations, and does not even know the exact number of illegal immigrants right now.”  

The Global Times – typically a nationalistic leaning paper – appeared to be using the crackdown as an occasion to acknowledge the country’s need for immigration reform.

“China should create favorable and legal conditions for foreigners to live and work in the country,” the article states. “On the other hand, China should be decisive in cracking down on illegal immigrants. It cannot afford to be an immigrant destination at this early stage.”  

If the tenet about citizens of poor countries chasing opportunity in richer nations holds true, the 20,000 illegal immigrants China dealt with this year will very soon pale in comparison to the number of illegal immigrants in the United States as of 2011: 11.5 million.

Correction: May 17, 2012

An earlier version of this post noted that a member of the National People's Congress Standing Committee told CCTV that it was considering creating special detention centers to hold foreigners without valid visas. It was Professor Xiang Dang of the Chinese People's Public Security University, not a member of the National People's Standing Committee who made that comment.