6 Sep 2011 | Azerbaijan News, Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
A journalist claims he was kidnapped and expelled from Azerbaijan. Yafez Hasanov, an Azerbaijani correspondent from Radio Azadliq, part of Radio Free Europe, was in Naxcivan investigating the death of airport technician Turaz Zeynalov, when he was abducted by three men. The suspects — who were driving a vehicle similar to those used by government security officials — told him that if he returned to Naxcivan, it would “cost him.” The men branded Zeynalov, who died after being summoned to the National Security Ministry, a “traitor.” Hasanov was taken to the Iranian border and told to return to Baku via Iran, where RFE is considered an illegal organisation.
5 Sep 2011 | Iran, Middle East and North Africa
Iranian publishers are reeling after measures to save money when printing the Koran backfired this week. In an attempt to make cheaper, mass distribution editions available, the Holy Book was produced and printed in China. But the copies, already on the streets, contain several typing errors, compromising the accuracy of the religious text.
Officials are now considering banning Chinese-printed editions of the Koran in Iran, in order to eliminate erroneous copies. Bookshops who have been supplied the books will have to pay the costs. Rather than acknowledging their errors, officials are focusing on encouraging the purchase of higher priced Iranian editions, which were praised for being more meticulously checked than their Chinese counterparts.
Meticulous checking is something Iranian officials are extremely adept in — it seems that the Iranian editors (read censors) have once again been investing their time and energy on surveillance, as citizens became the target of an internet security scam that enabled snooping on Google users. Google last week confirmed that Internet users in Iran had been scammed by a false certificate verifying site authenticity. Internet users unwittingly revealed their activity to Iranian officials through the usage of the “man-in-the-middle-attack”, which uses a false certificate to obtain the login credentials of users.
The certificate has since been cancelled, but Mozilla has now released an update to Firefox to further protect targeted Internet users with a step by step guide to deleting the DigiNotar CA certificate
18 Aug 2011 | Iran, Middle East and North Africa
Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Guidance has this week refused publication of Nezami’s Khosro and Shirin, a love story read by generations as a classic of Persian literature.
Writers and publishers in Iran are well-versed in the language of the censors, but this latest incision has come as a shock to all, with members of the literary community voicing their outrage and concern. One can only guess that it is the beautiful depictions of Shirin’s “embrace” of her husband Khosro that have been deemed unsuitable or even “indecent”, according to the regime’s tapered view.
Thousands of books await the censor’s eye with huge backlogs arising from the number of applications from some 70,000 publishing houses, but also the time that censors devote to assessing existing publications. Omid Nifarjam, himself a translator of books by Nabakov and other non-Iranian writers into the Persian language, provides an excellent insight into the situation.
Perhaps the spoken word is all that can remain untouched, delivered clandestinely by the brave. In this clip, prolific contemporary poet Hila Sedighi recites a poem of protest against the atrocities of the Islamic republic (begins at 0:41 seconds). She refers to Rustam and Siavosh, heroes in classical epic poetry, and declares, “of a country of philosophy and poems and piety, we’re left with ignorance and anger and denial”.
9 Aug 2011 | Asia and Pacific, China, Iran, Middle East and North Africa
State media in China and Iran have both offered their two cents in response to the riots that have swept the UK over the past three days.
A commentator at Communist Party mouthpiece, People’s Daily, opined that this sort of chaos is precisely the result of a lack of censorship of social networking websites:
The West have been talking about supporting internet freedom, and oppose other countries’ government to control this kind of websites, now we can say they are tasting the bitter fruit [of their complacency] and they can’t complain about it.
News agency Xinhua, remembering Beijing’s smooth staging of the 2008 Olympics, said:
After the riots, the image of London has been severely damaged, leaving the people sceptical and worried about the public security situation during the London Olympics.
Meanwhile, Press TV reported that Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast “urged the British government to order the police to stop their violent confrontation with the people.” He also “asked independent human rights organisations to investigate the killing in order to protect the civil rights and civil liberties.”
