17 Jun 09 | Uncategorized
Crossposted from the OpenNet Initiative
Last week, as Iranian voters went to the polls to elect the country’s next president, the Iranian government blocked access to number of political Web sites, as well as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
Yesterday the OpenNet Initiative profiled the extent of this crackdown. Today we are releasing a new survey of Internet filtering and online content controls in Iran, which details the most recent instances of censorship and provides a basic framework for understanding the legal, technical and institutional mechanisms of filtering in Iran.
17 Jun 09 | Uncategorized
“I believe that a recount of the votes under the current conditions won’t solve anything. A new election must be held and this time it should be under the monitoring of international organizations so that all participants would be contented that the votes that come out of the ballot boxes are the real votes of the people.”
Read the rest here
17 Jun 09 | Uncategorized
Pajamas media has published a translation of a “seven-point manifesto” circulating amongst protesters in Iran. It calls for:
1. Stripping Ayatollah Khamenei of his supreme leadership position because of his unfairness. Fairness is a requirement of a supreme leader.
2. Stripping Ahmadinejad of the presidency, due to his unlawful act of maintaining the position illegally.
3. Transferring temporary supreme leadership position to Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazery until the formation of a committee to reevaluate and adjust Iran’s constitution.
4. Recognizing Mir Hossein Mousavi as the rightfully elected president of the people.
5. Formation of a new government by President Mousavi and preparation for the implementation of new constitutional amendments.
6. Unconditional release of all political prisoners regardless of ideology or party platform.
7. Dissolution of all organizations — both secret and public — designed for the oppression of the Iranian people, such as the Gasht Ershad [Iranian morality police].
Hat-tip: Pajamas Media
16 Jun 09 | Uncategorized
The protests in Iran have been seen by many as conclusively proving the value of the Internet in organising and reporting civil movements.
Perhaps the tech-savviness is the only unsurprising element of the events of the past few days. Despite restrictions, Iran’s youth are remarkably active on the web, with Farsi the fourth most prevalant language in the blogosphere. As was pointed out at Internet Sans Frontieres:
“In 1979 revolutionary songs started to fill the streets of Tehran while the Shah was boarding the plane that brought him out of the country. Today the web is spreading and amplifying the news of the ongoing protests at last week’s election results.
In Iran there are more than six million web users, the majority of whom are under 25.”
Particular attention has been paid to the events on Twitter, with thousands around the world following #IranElection.
At friendfeed.com, you can view an aggregation of all related tweets coming out of Iran.
Citizen photojournalism hub Demotix is hosting pictures from its contributors in Iran here.
As foreign media have now been severely restricted (the BBC having already experienced jamming since Friday afternoon), these citizen sources may be the only way to find out what’s happening.
