Iran has shut down a daily newspaper after it published a front-page story that featured George Clooney wearing an "I am Charlie" badge.
Mardom-e Emrooz or Today's People, a reformist newspaper that had started its operations quite recently, has been shut down after an Iran court issued orders regarding the same.
Several in the Iranian government, along with the conservative newspapers, launched an attack on the daily for publishing a cover photo of American actor George Clooney at the Golden Globes, in its 14 January edition.
Mardom-e Emrooz carried a story with the headline, "I am Charlie, too", quoting statements made by Clooney in his acceptance speech at the Golden Globe Awards, in which he remembered the slain Charlie Hebdo cartoonists.
The Charlie Hebdo survivor's cover that features Prophet Muhammad had irked the Muslim countries.
An Iranian conservative newspaper, Kayhan, reportedly called "the cartoonists for the obscene publication Charlie Hebdo...mahdur al-dam [those whose blood is worthless because they violated Islam]."
According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, the government had to close down the Iranian newspaper after eight members of Parliament wrote to Iran's cultural ministry to "assertively confront" the newspaper.
George Clooney's Gloden Globe Speech
While accepting Cecil B. DeMille gong for his work in Hollywood and his off-screen activism, George Clooney made an impactful speech at the Gloden Globe Awards.
"Today is an extraordinary day," he said. "Millions marched not only in Paris but all around the world, and there were Christians and Jews and Muslims, leaders of countries all over the world, they didn't march in protest, they marched in support of the idea that we will not walk in fear."
"Je suis Charlie."
Clooney and his wife Amal Clooney, both wore "Je Suis Charlie" pin badges to the award function.
