Censorship fears rise as Iran blocks access to top websites
TEHRAN: Iran on Monday shut down access to some of the world's most popular websites. Users were unable to open popular sites including Amazon.com and YouTube following instructions to service providers to filter them.
Similar edicts have been issued against Wikipedia, the internet encyclopaedia, IMDB.com, an online film database, and the New York Times site. Attempts to open the sites are met with a page reading: "The requested page is forbidden".
The clampdown was ordered by senior judiciary officials in the latest phase of a campaign that has seen high-speed broadband facilities banned in an attempt to impede "corrupting" foreign films and music. It is in line with a campaign by Iran's religious president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to purge the country of western cultural influences.
Iran was among 13 countries branded "enemies of the internet" last month by the human rights group, Reporters Without Borders, which cited state-sanctioned blocking of websites and the widespread intimidation and jailing of bloggers.
Critics accuse Iran of using filtering technology to censor more sites than any country apart from China. Until now, targets have been mainly linked to opposition groups or those deemed "immoral" under Iran's Islamic legal code. Some news sites, such as the BBC's Farsi service, are also blocked.
"We have asked the judiciary, who are in charge of filtering, to explain the decisions on all the sites specified but so far the only reply we have is a confirmation of the block on Wikipedia. We don't know why," said a senior technician with Datak, a service provider.
The ban on YouTube reflects a growing official sensitivity to private films on the internet, an issue highlighted by a recent online video which appears to show an Iranian soap opera star having sex.
With some 7.5 million surfers, Iran is believed to have the highest rate of web use in the Middle East after Israel. The net's popularity has prompted an estimated 100,000 bloggers, many opposed to the Islamic regime. Some blogs are substitutes for Iran's once-flourishing, but now largely supressed, reformist press.
Last week Mohammed Tourang, head of the information bureau's cultural committee, warned Iranian websites of stricter rules by announcing steps to stamp out "immoral and illegal" content. He said site owners would be given official reminders to eliminate forbidden material. Special attention would be paid to content judged to be a threat to national unity or insulting to sacred religious texts and symbols. Students and academics say the move limits their ability to conduct research.
The purge mirrors a rising tide of censorship in Iranian publishing which has resulted in the banning of hundreds of books, including western classics. Illegal satellite dishes have also been seized.
Bestsellers banned: Dozens of literary masterpieces and international bestsellers have been banned in Iran in a dramatic rise in censorship that has plunged the country's publishing industry into crisis. Even Terry Chevalier's best-selling novel Girl With a Pearl Earring has been banned after completing six print runs.
Companies that once specialised in popular fiction and other money-spinners are being restricted to academic texts under a cultural freeze instigated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Several thousand new and previously published works have been blacklisted by Iran's culture and Islamic guidance ministry, which vets all books.
Newly banned books include Farsi translations of Tracy Chevalier's best-seller Girl With a Pearl Earring and Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, the latter for upsetting clerics within Iran's tiny Christian community. Chevalier's novel has completed six print runs in Iran and earned hefty profits for its local publisher, Cheshme.
Another publishing house has been banned from selling a successful series of books featuring lyrics by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Doors, Black Sabbath, Queen and Guns n' Roses. Stores were told to remove the books or face closure. Permission was subsequently denied for the publisher to reprint.
The crackdown also covers classics, such as William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, and scores of works by Iranian authors.
Publication rights have been withdrawn for The Cock, a novel by Ebrahim Golestan, an Iranian writer based in Britain, and for all works by Sadegh Hedayat, a pre-revolutionary novelist and commentator whose books are renowned in several European countries. Some Iranian writers have vowed to withhold future books for publication.
Some bans are being imposed under fresh rules requiring renewed permits for previously published works. Crisis talks between Iran's publishing union and the culture ministry have failed to ease the situation. "We have books on psychology, history, politics and folklore which have been sitting for nine months and still no answer," a senior executive with Cheshme told the Guardian.
The clampdown has been headed by the hardline culture minister, Mohammed Hossein Saffar Harandi, a former revolutionary guard and close ally of Mr Ahmadinejad. It follows a relative thaw during the eight-year presidency of Mr Ahmadinejad's reformist predecessor, Mohammed Khatami.
One publisher said recently: "Culture ministry officials told us that during the reformist period the government went to excess and permitted books which ruined the atmosphere."Opening Iran's national book week festival recently, Mr Saffar Harandi said a tougher line was needed to stop publishers from serving a "poisoned dish to the young generation". He said some books deliberately gave Iranians a sense of inferiority and encouraged them to be lackeys of the west.
"We have complaints against those who see books as only a market and are acting as assistants for evil," he said. "Sometimes the humiliation of Iranian youth is implied or suggested in the books. Sometimes the media transmits the concept that we Muslims and easterners lack proper means and, therefore, we should stretch our hands towards others."
His comments followed the publication of a parliamentary report that attacked Mr Khatami's presidency for creating what it said was a climate encouraging immoral behaviour, sex before marriage, mockery of religious traditions and secularism. One of the report's authors, Javad Aryianmanesh, vice-chairman of the parliamentary culture committee said: "Due to cultural indulgence necessary supervision over artistic and cultural works did not take place."
However, publishers say many books are being banned arbitrarily. "We had adapted to the previous policy but now that is annulled and they are imposing their own personal taste," said Mohammed Ali Jafarieh, head of the Sales publishing house. "Publishers are being hurt. We rely on multiple print runs to make a profit but if these are being denied we cannot make any money."
The rise in book censorship mirrors repression in other spheres. In September the reformist newspaper Shargh was closed after publishing a cartoon depicting President George Bush, disguised as a horse, debating with a donkey under a halo, widely seen as representing Mr Ahmadinejad. The publishers launched a replacement newspaper, Rouzegar, but it was ordered to close after five days. —Dawn/Guardian News Service
