Daniel Sadeh

PSCI 286
Professor Baghat

Censorship in Iran

Censorship is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material,

which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the

government or media organizations as determined by a censor. According to Darren

O'Byrne, censorship in accordance to human rights, “is treated as an affront to

individual freedom, a violation of our rights to know, to think, to express ourselves. It is a

tool for state repression, for maintenance of power, achieved through the manipulation

of the cultural sphere.” The Islamic Republic of Iran is limiting the publishing,

dissemination, and viewing of certain information, whereas countries like America

protect and grant the freedoms of free speech, press, etc. Censorship in Iran takes

many forms, especially in politics, media, religion, and now the internet.

Censorship in Iran encompasses a wide range of subject matters. The agendas

behind such censorship are varied; some are stated outright by Iranian government

itself and some are surmised by observers inside and out of the country. However, as

stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19: “Everyone has the right

to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions

without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any

media regardless of frontiers.”

Censorship in Iran is largely seen as a measure to maintain the stability of the

country and the control of the Islamic government. Censorship helps prevent

unapproved reformist, counter-revolutionary, or religious proponents, peaceful or

otherwise, from organizing themselves and spreading their ideals. In 2007, for example,

five women were charged with "endangering national security" and sentenced to prison

for collecting over a million signatures supporting the abolishment of laws discriminating

against women. (MacFarquhar, 2007)

Additionally, censorship prevents Iranian citizens from discovering or learning

more about past and current failures and abuses of the government that could create or

inflame anti-government sentiment. Some of the topics explicitly banned from

discussion in the media by the Supreme National Security Council include Iran's

economic troubles, the possibility of new international sanctions targeted at Iran's

nuclear program, negotiations with the United States regarding Iraq, social taboos,

unrest among Iran's Azeri and other ethnic minorities, and, more recently, coverage of

the 2008 Presidential election in Iran.

The Media of Iran is privately and publicly owned but subject to the control of the

government. A special court, Supreme National Security Council, has authority to

monitor the print media and may suspend publication or revoke the licenses of papers

or journals that a jury finds guilty of publishing anti-religious material, slander, or

information detrimental to the national interest. Since the late 1990s, the court has shut

down many pro-reform newspapers and other periodicals.

Two notable crackdowns on the Iranian press occurred in August 1979, early in

the Islamic Revolution, when the Khomeini forces were consolidating control and

dozens of non-Islamist newspapers were banned under a new press law banning

"counter-revolutionary policies and acts." (Schiraz, Pg. 51) And in April 2000, when the

conservative-controlled judiciary launched "a wide-ranging crackdown" against the then

flowering of democratic reformism. Nearly all of the reformist dailies were closed and

many leading journalists jailed.

A number of unauthorized foreign radio services also broadcast into Iran on

short-wave, and encounter occasional jamming by the Iranian government due to their

controversial nature. Such services include a popular phone-in program from Kol Israel

(Voice of Israel), where callers must dial a number in Europe to be rerouted to the studio

in Israel in order to protect against persecution for communicating with an enemy state.

(Milewski, 2008) In the 1980s, Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the Iranian Revolution,

pronounced death sentences for the makers of a radio program in which a female

respondent named a Japanese soap opera character as her role model, rather than

Fatima, the prophet of Islam, Muhammad's daughter. (Tait, 2009)

Despite a strict ban on satellite television, dishes dot many Iranian rooftops and

people have access to dozens of Persian-language channels, including the Voice of

America, broadcasting a daily dose of politics and entertainment. However, both satellite

and state run television programming is under the strict scrutiny of the Iranian

Government. In March 2009, Amoo Pourang (Uncle Pourang), an Iranian children

television show watched by millions of Iranian children three times a week on state TV

was pulled off after a child appearing on the program called his pet monkey Mahmoud

Ahmadinejad live on air. (Tait, 2009)

In the first decade of the 21st century, Iran experienced a great surge in Internet

usage, and, with 20 million people on the Internet. When initially introduced, the Internet

services provided by the government within Iran were comparatively open. Many users

saw the Internet as an easy way to get around Iran's strict press laws. (Feuilherade,
2002) With the election of Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, and the start of the

2nd of Khordad reform movement, a clampdown occurred that became stricter after the

election of conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005. Iran is now

considered to be one of the most repressive Internet-censorship regimes in the world.

Many bloggers, online activists, and technical staff have faced jail terms,

harassment and abuse. In November 2006, Iran was one of 13 countries labeled

"enemies of the internet" by activist group Reporters Without Borders and by March

2010, it was one of the top three regimes. Following the 2009 Iranian presidential

election, the U.S. Senate ratified a plan to help curb "censorship in the Islamic

Republic". The legislation dubbed the Victims of Iranian Censorship Act, also known as

the VOICE Act, was allocated $50 million to fund measures "to counter Iranian

government efforts to jam radio, satellite, and Internet-based transmissions."(AFP 2010)

In terms of blogging, every ISP must be approved by both the Telecommunication

Company of Iran and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, and must implement

content-control software for websites and e-mail. ISPs face heavy penalties if they do

not comply with the government filter lists. At least twelve ISPs have been shut down for

failing to install adequate filters. (Hoff, 2005) The state blacklist consists of about 15,000

websites forbidden by the Iranian government. Before subscribers can access Internet

service providers, they must first promise in writing not to access "non-Islamic" sites.

(Opennet.com) In 2008, Iran has blocked access to more than five million Internet sites,

whose content is mostly perceived as immoral and anti-social. In recent years, Internet

service providers have been told to block access to political, human rights and women's

sites and weblogs expressing dissent or deemed to be pornographic and anti-Islamic.

The ban has also targeted such popular social networking sites as Facebook and

YouTube, news sites such as the New York Times and Washington Journal, and even

Amazon.com and imbd.com, which provides movie plots and character actors.

(Opennet.com)

When the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance issued a media

blackout for foreign journalists in Iran, mainstream U.S. media outlets resorted to social

networking sites in order to provide some coverage, rather any coverage at all, of the

events unfolding after Iran's June 12 presidential election. Viewers were bombarded

with repeated and identical images shot by amateur videographers from inside Iran of

mass crowds, chaos, fires, violence, raised hands, and clashes with riot police.

Under the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, beginning in 2005,

Iran’s human rights record "has deteriorated markedly" according to the group Human

Rights Watch. Months long arbitrary detentions of "peaceful activists, journalists,

students, and human rights defenders" and often charged with “acting against national

security,” has intensified under President Ahmadinejad. (Rights Crisis 2008) Only time

will tell if the Green Revolution will take over the country and see to it that human rights,

such as freedom of expression, are protected.

Bibiliography

O'Byrne, Darren J. Human Rights: an Introduction. Harlow, England: Longman, 2003.

Print.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights. [Geneva]: United Nations, Department of Public

Information, 2007. Print.

Farquhar, Neil. "Iran Cracks Down on Dissent." New York Times 24 June 2007, Middle
East sec. Print.

Schirazi, Asghar. The Constitution of Iran: Politics and the State in the Islamic Republic.
London: I.B. Tauris, 1997. Print.

Milewski, Terry. "Listening to Iran." CBC News. 27 Aug. 2008. Web.

<http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/08/27/f-rfa-milewski.html>.

Tait, Robert. "Censorship Fears Rise as Iran Blocks Access to Top Websites". The
Guardian (London) 4 December 2006. Web.
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/dec/04/news.iran>.

Feuilherade, Peter. "Iran's Banned Press Turns to the Net." BBC News. 9 Aug. 2002.
Web.
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/not_in_website/syndication/monitoring/media_reports/21835
73.stm>.

AFP. "US Senate Targets Iran Censorship." Google News. 24 July 2009. Web.
<http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gkXKwx64nXJo0t90gcGVMzO
AqVyw>.

Hoff, Rachel. "Dissident Watch: Arash Sigarchi." Middle East Forum XII.4 (2005): 96.
Web. <http://www.meforum.org/792/dissident-watch-arash-sigarchi>.

"Internet Filtering in Iran in 2004-2005: A Country Study | OpenNet Initiative." ONI Home
Page | OpenNet Initiative. 2006. Web. <http://opennet.net/studies/iran>.

"Rights Crisis Escalates Faces and Cases from Ahmadinejad’s Crackdown."

International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. 20 Sept. 2008. Web.
<http://www.iranhumanrights.org/2008/09/irancrackdown/>.