Young Iranians Speak Out (Online) for Democracy

TEHRAN, Iran – The reformist newspaper Eqbal was shut down here on Monday by the city’s mayor and a presidential hopeful, Mahdi Ahmadinejad.As Friday’s presidential runoff election between Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mr. Ahmadinejad approaches, the mayor learned that the paper was planning to publish an article suggesting there was fraud in last week’s election and took swift action against it, the Associated Press reported.Liberal voices in another medium have not been silenced, though. Bloggers have continued to use the Internet to spread their hopes of democracy for Iran, often at great risk to themselves.The ministry in charge of communication in Iran, the Mokhabeerat, uses a filtering program to censor sexually explicit sites. It is now using the same technique to block access to blogs that convey dissident messages from inside Iran. Clever bloggers, however, persist and find ways around such constraints. According to unofficial projections, there are between 3 million and 4 million Internet subscribers in Iran. The online encyclopedia Wikipedia estimates that more than 65,000 blogs are written in Farsi.Meanwhile, about 100 pro-democracy publications have been shut down in the last five years by the judiciary, which is led by an official appointed by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the AP reported.Iran’s first blog was started in September 2001. By November of that year, an information technology columnist and computer programmer, Hussein Derakhshan, had published a how-to guide to blogging in Farsi. Mr. Derakhshan dished out tips on how to put legible Farsi online complete with right-to-left writing.Currently living in Toronto, Mr. Derakhshan worries about his return to Iran someday. His fear is seemingly justified as bloggers come under attack, just as authorities cracked down on reformist newspapers a few years ago.In April 2003, a journalist and blogger, Sina Motallebi, was arrested because of comments made in his online journal. In November 2004, another blogger, Mojtaba Sami Nejad, was arrested for reporting the detention of three fellow bloggers at man-namanam.blogspot.com. While in prison, his blog was transferred to the blog of the Islamist group Hezbollah, irongroup.blogspot.com.Mr. Sami Nejad was temporarily released but was rearrested when he launched a new Web site at 8mdr8.blogspot.com. He was sentenced to two years in prison. The blogging community created an online petition, at www.petitiononline.com/mojsn/petition.html, to urge government officials and President Khatemi to release Mr. Sami Nejad immediately, but it was unsuccessful.A 27-year-old journalist, Parastoo Dokoohaki, is also known as Zan Nevesht – the name of her blog, which translates to woman writer. Ms. Dokoohaki’s day job is writing about social issues for the shuttered newspaper Eqbal. A self-proclaimed feminist, Ms. Dokoohaki supported a reformist candidate, Mostafa Moin, in last Friday’s election and is aggravated about the vote results that left her candidate out of the runoff.She and many others believed Mr. Moin would have posed a challenge to Mr. Rafsanjani, but Mr. Moin was not among the top five candidates in a field of eight.In a recent dispatch, Zan Nevesht expressed concerns about the Mokhabeerat’s prying eyes. Ms. Dokoohaki knows all about the filter system and worries about it often. Zan Nevesht gets about 1,500 hits a day and addresses the problems and hardships of young women in her country, a subject close to her heart.Ms. Dokoohaki omits phrases she deems contentious enough to raise a red flag to filters and censors. She monitors and deletes replies from her readers that could likewise bring unwanted attention from authorities.She knows she is being watched. After all, the blog of her would-be leader, Mr. Moin, at www.drMoin.ir, is not longer active.A month ago, she was targeted by Ansar Al-Islam’s hard-line newspaper Ya Sarat’al Hussein. The paper falsely reported that Mr. Moin paid Ms. Dokoohaki and others for their support and to attend one of his rallies.Bloggers are mostly young, well-educated, and hail from big cities, since Internet access is an expense many young, unemployed Iranians cannot afford.Those able to pay for service and willing to deal with its slow speed and lack of reliability have embraced blogging as a way to discuss divisive issues in a closed society, a 24-year-old Web designer, Payam Parsinejad, said. Mr. Pasinejad has created many of the blogs in Tehran. He also keeps a blog at www.tafteh.ws that steers clear of politics.In an effort to fight hard-liners and perhaps legitimize blogging, a close ally of Mr. Khatemi and a former vice president for legal and parliamentary affairs, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, started his own blog in late 2003. It can be found at www.webneveshteha.com.Mr. Abtahi, who is affectionately known as the “mullah blogger,” since he is a Muslim cleric, writes about reformist issues. At his site, the name of which literally means “written in a Web site,” Mr. Abtahi has supported the release of Mr. Sami Nejad.The number of bloggers continues to grow despite government efforts to control them. Both Ms. Dokoohaki and Mr. Parsinejad say more bloggers are likely to be harassed and jailed, but they are optimistic that, despite the risks, their fellow bloggers will not be stopped.

Young Iranians Speak Out (Online) for Democracy

Young Iranians Speak Out (Online) for Democracy

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