Iranian bloggers and internet censorship

by Parisa Najafi Tonekaboni


To begin I would like to recall one particular blogger, Hossein Ronaghi Maleki. For 15 months he has been in prison and was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. Although he has suffered from a kidney disease for months, Iranian authorities have not released him, not even for medical treatment.

That leads to the question: why is the Iranian regime so afraid of bloggers and the internet?

The wave of Farsi blogs began in September 2001, when Hossein Derakhshan published on his blog instructions in Farsi explaining how to set up one’s own blog (By the way, he has been in jail for two years and was sentenced to 19 ½ years imprisonment.).

The blogosphere belongs to the most growing internet areas in Iran. Within just a few years, Farsi became one of the most used languages in the blogosphere. According to estimates, there are about 70,000 up to 100,000 Farsi blogs.

The most important force behind this development is certainly the young educated Iranian generation, which yearns for freedom and is inquisitive. The Iranian blogosphere is not only very diverse, but also very fast and up-to-date.

Themes range from conservation and animal welfare to literature and art. Blogs especially offer women a space to express their issues and even to break certain societal taboos. There are many feminist blogs, which call attention to discrimination in law and society. For years, also the women’s movement in Iran has discovered the medium for itself. And of course, political themes are popular, because blogs serve as an important source of information.

A blog is a medium that promotes dialogue. People with different opinions are meeting, talking and discussing with each other. I have often participated in discussions about human rights, the death penalty, women’s rights and much more. The internet makes it possible for supporters of the regime and dissidents to talk with each other. This is something that hardly ever happens in Iranian society and politics.

The political censorship by the Iranian regime forces people to search for alternative media. We are talking about a country in which television and radio are state-controlled and only spreading propaganda. Newspapers can be closed in just one day. This means that hundreds of people - not only journalists, but also technical employees - become suddenly unemployed. That is why self-censorship is widespread in the Iranian press and among journalists.

In a situation such as this, blogs provide the biggest opportunities. Several years ago many journalists began to publish their texts and articles that they could not place in the press in their personal blogs.

Blogs also offer activists abroad a new source of information about life in Iran and the subjects that affect people there. They constitute a connection between the activists inside and the opposition outside Iran.

Years ago the Iranian regime already began censoring the internet by blocking certain sites. But recently internet censorship has taken on a new quality and the suppression of the internet activists has grown substantially. The Iranian regime has founded state institutions - like the Cyberarmy a division of the revolutionary guards, and the Internet Police - to systematically suppress freedom of opinion, and to threaten and criminalize bloggers and other internet activists.

At least eleven bloggers are imprisoned in Iran. The organisation "Reporters without Borders" estimates an even higher number. Especially after the presidential election of 2009 and the following protests, the regime has come to understand more than ever the meaning of the internet and is therefore reacting against it. Many blogs and websites were blocked or even deleted. The entire internet access in Iran was shut off multiple times, and host and domain providers were arrested. Blog providers were ordered to block or delete critical blogs.

Representatives of the regime now openly remark that the Cyberarmy is tasked with attacking critical websites (now called "enemy websites" by the regime). This means taking advantage of security flaws in order to destroy contents and therefore hack the website. Moreover, there are new guidelines for internet cafes. The owners are obligated to outfit their cafes with surveillance cameras, to record the data of each customer, and to save them for six months.

In spite of all the regime’s efforts, Iranian bloggers are continuing. Most are not impressed by the fact that their pages will be closed. For many internet users are utilizing proxys to evade the blockade. Bloggers sometimes even publish the number of visitors to their blogs, in order to show the government that its measures do not have much effect. If their blogs are deleted, they will start a new one.

Content in the internet can never fully be regulated, neither in Iran nor anywhere else, but internet activists in Iran fight a hard battle. We should support them.