Iran: Religious & Internet Restrictions (Updated)

RELIGIOUS FREEDOMS UNDER FIRE

The Iranian regime is steadily increasing its pressure on religious minorities within the Islamic Republic, a new U.S. government report on international religious freedoms has assessed. The annual study, released on September 14th by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, slams the Iranian government for what it terms a “continued deterioration of the extremely poor status of respect for religious freedom” over the past year, manifested through widespread instances of “government imprisonment, harassment, intimidation, and discrimination based on religious beliefs.” The result? “A threatening atmosphere for nearly all non-Shi’a religious groups, most notably for Bahá’ís, as well as Sufi Muslims, evangelical Christians, and members of the Jewish community.”

Read more - United States Department of State

UPDATED (1) - September 20, 2007 - Islamic Republic Government Discriminates against 800 Students on Basis of Faith. With an estimated 300,000 members, the Baha’i community is Iran’s largest religious minority. The Iranian government considers Baha’is to be apostates from Islam and does not recognize their faith as legitimate, unlike Iran’s Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian communities. Baha’is in Iran cannot practice their faith in a public manner.

Read more - HRW Bahai Students

GOOGLE GOES DARK IN IRAN

As part of its ongoing effort to limit Western influence within the Islamic Republic, the government of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has set its sights on the world’s most popular search engine. On September 16th, the Iranian regime began jamming Google and its affiliated email service, Gmail, opening what observers term “a new era of censorship” in Iran. Iran becomes the second country after China to filter Google. At the same time, the Islamic Republic has also imposed restrictions on access to Blogfa, a popular Farsi-language weblog provider.

Read more - Rooz

The above excerpts are mostly from AFPC - September 18, 2007

TURKEY: WORDPRESS BANNED & YouTube BLOCKED

P.S. - Today, I was told by a reader in Turkey that, since 15th August 2007, wordpress.com has been blocked/filtered in Turkey.  Here is the reason why:

AKP Watch and WordPress - and - Islamist/Creationist Adnan Oktar Blocked CNN Blog in Turkey

UPDATED (2) - September 20, 2007 - The situation is getting even more interesting in Turkey.  ”On Tuesday a Turkish court apparently ordered telecoms authorities to block access to the popular video-sharing website YouTube over videos that allegedly insulted the country’s leaders, a report said.”

“The decision followed a complaint by a resident in the eastern city of Sivas that the site hosted videos containing insults against Turkey’s founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, President Abdullah Gul, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the army, the Anatolia news agency reported.” - Read more — ANKARA (AFP) via Internations

It seems Turkey has quite a few additional steps to take to reach full Democracy. However, I can also understand the sensitivity of the situation there regarding the Islamist influence, where a close eye should be kept on the type of criticism. It is a fragile situation and unlike full blown democracies in the West. After all, in Iran before 1979 thuggish revolution, much misleading criticism was directed at the Shah’s regime. However, I don’t think you can be on the road to Democracy unless you do allow ‘constructive criticism’.