Iranian bloggers supporting the opposition movement have launched a new campaign aimed at publicizing the plight of the lesser-known prisoners who have been jailed in the postelection unrest. Go to Radio Free Europe.

NEW YORK The 2010 Payne Awards for Ethics in Journalism have been bestowed upon freelance writer Scott Carney and Wall Street Journal bureau chief Farnaz Fassihi. Go to original article.

RAHANA – In an Open letter to Sadegh Larjani, more than 100 Iranian bloggers and journalists have asked for the release of their captive colleagues. The initiative has been supported by a number of lawyers who defend the rights of journalists. The letter outlines the ongoing police state which started after the June presidential election and asks Ayatollah Larijani, as the country’s highest judicial authority, to take the necessary steps for the release of jailed journalists. Go to original article.

TEHRAN — Iran’s leading moderate daily Shargh hit the news stands again on Sunday nearly three years after authorities banned it for publishing an interview with a poet accused of being a lesbian.

The Islamic republic ordered the newspaper’s closure in August 2007 over the full-page interview with Saghi Ghahreman, an expatriate Iranian poet living in Canada whom authorities described as “counter-revolutionary.” Also at WP — Go to AFP.

Kaylee Hartung speaks with journalist Roxana Saberi about her imprisonment in Iran.

Iranian photojournalist Hasan Sarbakhshian is among the dozens of journalists who fled Iran following last year’s disputed presidential vote. Go to Radio Free Europe.

…Last week, in a keynote speech at Index on Censorship’s freedom of expression awards, after describing his ordeal, he suggested what might be done to help journalists jailed by the Islamic Republic.

He argued that the digital age has heralded the dawn of a new era because it has enabled educated Iranians to communicate with each other and the outside world.

It has also reduced the gap between the elite and the masses. “And that frightened the government,” said Bahari. “The protest of millions of people against [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad’s re-election in June 2009 was a clear manifestation of this narrowing gap.

“I was on the streets of Tehran during those days. The demonstrators were not all secular, educated, westernised individuals. They were factory workers, housewives and farmers.

“In the absence of any clear vision for the future of the country and looking for a quick fix the government chose to blame the media for stirring people.”

When Bahari was arrested nine days after the election his interrogator told him: “There is no difference between culture, journalism and intelligence… You gather and report information. That is exactly what a spy does.”

But he believes his release “shows that the Iranian government is not as indifferent to negative publicity as it pretends to be.”

He also contends that “supporting the free flow of information to and from Iran is investing in Iran’s future” because “it narrows the gap between Iranians and the rest of the world. It is the quickest shortcut to democracy for Iranians.”

In the meantime, the regime will try its best to suffocate the voices of dissent through brute force, he said. “Many lives will perish and be lost in the process. There will be periods of silence and days of turbulence.

“But in the end, as Prophet Mohammad said: ‘An infidel can rule a nation for a long time. But an oppressor will never succeed in doing so.’”

To offer your support for the campaign for the release of Iranian journalists from prison go to www.oursocietywillbeafreesociety.org.

Guardian:  Maziar Bahari: ‘The Iranian government is shooting the messenger’

An edited extract from the speech given by Maziar Bahari at the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression awards.

Iran’s state-owned media, judiciary, and security forces have opened a coordinated attack on human rights groups in recent weeks under the guise of defending the nation against “cyber warfare,” Human Rights Watch said today.

The authorities have arbitrarily arrested human rights defenders, shut down websites run by human rights groups, and opened media campaigns accusing civil society groups of collaborating with foreign intelligence agencies and terrorist groups.

“Yet again, the government has drawn upon its tired playbook of foreign espionage and conspiracy theories to silence the few remaining critical voices in the country,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “This smacks of a desperate tactic to find one more excuse to attack human rights activists.” Go to Human Rights Watch.

Free Iran:  Although the EU’s deliberations about promoting open access to information in Iran is a positive step, without pressuring the regime such calls for open access would simply fall on deaf ears.  The EU should kick out their satellite channels from Western satellites that carry them and make it far more difficult for them to buy communication gears from Western companies.  There is a lot that the EU could do unilaterally.

BRUSSELS—Iran must stop jamming satellite broadcasting and censoring the Internet, the European Union said Monday, but the bloc stopped short of threatening any action if Tehran doesn’t agree to it.

EU foreign ministers said in a statement that Iran must “put an end to this electronic interference immediately.”

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that banning broadcasts such as the British Broadcasting Corp. and Germany’s Deutsche Welle highlights the authorities’ fear “of their people hearing the truth about what’s happening in their own country.

“It says a lot about the trust the Iranian government has in its own people,” he said. “They’re not willing to hear them hear independent news. I think it’s very important that they open up the airwaves as soon as possible.”

The EU said it wants to take up the issue before the International Telecommunications Union.

“The interesting thing is that Iran wants to expand its satellite channels network around the world — that’s why the ITU is the best place to talk about that,” German Deputy Foreign Minister Werner Hoyer said. “It is important that we show European solidarity and I think we can get that.”

Also see:

BBC:  EU pressures Iran to end jamming

RFE:  EU Foreign Ministers Call On Iran To End Broadcast Jamming

Go to WSJ.

Free Iran:  A great example of individual initiative.

Austin Heap, the programmer from California, explains how he created Haystack, the software that broke the grip of Iran’s censors after the disputed 2009 election.

If you imagined a computer hacker with the know-how to topple governments, you might well picture someone who looks a lot like Austin Heap. He’s a 26-year-old programmer from San Francisco with long wavy hair, wearing jeans, T-shirt and aviator sunglasses the morning we meet. He is also the creator of a piece of software called Haystack, which was a key technology used by Iranians to disseminate information outside the country in the protests that followed the disputed election result in June 2009, when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unconvincingly triumphed against three challengers.

The Iranian government already filtered its citizens’ email and Skype conversations, but in the aftermath of the election, such censorship was increased in an attempt to identify dissidents who were using the web to organise and communicate with each other and with the outside world.

A tech wunderkind originally from Ohio, Heap developed Haystack to open up social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, giving voices on the streets a platform, and people in the west a window into a closed-down state. He’s now the executive director of the Censorship Research Centre in San Francisco, a non-profit organisation founded with his colleague Daniel Colascione to provide anti-censorship education, outreach, and technology for free to those who need it most.

What is Haystack and how does it work?

Haystack is a piece of software that someone in Iran runs on his or her computer. It does two things: first, it encrypts all of the data; second it hides that data inside normal traffic so it looks like you’re visiting innocuous sites. Daniel and I developed Haystack by looking at how the regime was using technology to filter the internet, and figured out the best strategy to get around it. Go to Guardian.

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Stop the regime from jamming international satellites

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Free Iran:  Providing access to satellite TV (and the internet) in Iran is one of the most critical steps the West could take to help Iran’s democratic movement.  If the West can’t stop the regime from jamming these satellite channels, then how could it stop its nuclear drive?  Sanctions should be tied to issues that help the Iranian people – not just to the regime’s nuclear drive.   If  implemented, sanctioning the regime for jamming satellite channels would be a huge step forward.

LA Times:  Europeans call for action against Islamic Republic for jamming of international satellites

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and his French and German counterparts think it’s high time for Europe to step up measures against Iran for its alleged jamming of foreign channels such as BBC Persian and Deutsche Welle, which are broadcast by satellite into the Islamic Republic.

“Iran has been regularly jamming the broadcasting by satellite of a number of foreign televisions and radio stations . . . since December 2009, a repetition of its practice in the run-up to the disputed elections earlier that year,” Miliband, along with counterparts Bernard Kouchner of France and Guido Westerwelle of Germany wrote in a recent letter to the EU’s foreign policy chief, Baroness Catherine Ashton.

“The objective was clearly to prevent the people of Iran from freely exercising their right to information,” read the letter. “We cannot remain silent. It seems to us to be essential that the European Union should make known in the strongest possible terms its condemnation of such unacceptable actions.”

The three powers suggest that a declaration condemning Iran for its alleged electronic interference be adopted at the next meeting of EU foreign ministers, scheduled to be held in Brussels on Monday.

Aside from condemnation and demanding that Iranian authorities stop tampering with international satellites, the ministers call for a number of other actions, including figuring out how to un-jam the blocked satellites and pulling the plug on exports of technologies the Iranian authorities are believed to use for censorship purposes.

The French daily Le Figaro reported that potential sanctions could include stopping companies such as Germany’s Siemens or Finland’s Nokia from delivering technologies to Tehran that allow the interception of cellphone and e-mail conversations.

On Tuesday, Iranian lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi blasted Nokia Siemens Networks, a subsidiary of Siemens and Nokia, saying the company supplied Iran with software used to suppress dissent in the Islamic Republic.

“Unfortunately, a certain number of firms support the Iranian regime in its repression and censorship,” Agence France-Presse quoted her as saying on France Culture radio. “It’s clearly the case with Siemens and Nokia when they send the Iranian state software and technology that it can use to monitor mobile telephone calls and text messages,” she said.

Another suggestion is to boot Iranian programs from Eutelsat, the leading French satellite operator which is said to have been specifically affected by the Iranian jamming. Eutelsat carries more than 70 foreign radio and TV programs, including some from the Iranian government.

“Another measure of retaliation would be to request that Eutelsat blocks in response to the interference of Iran in international channels, IRIB’s programs (Iranian state television), which it oversees the distribution of in Europe” a diplomat familiar with the matter told Le Figaro.

Iran’s Arabic-language channel, Al-Alam, and the English-language Press TV, would be affected, Le Figaro’s report said.

The jamming violates the principles of the International Union of Telecommunications, to which Iran is a party.

Also see:

NYT:  Iran’s Opposition Seeks More Help in Cyberwar With Government

In recent months the government slowed the Internet to a crawl, so that users were unable to perform the simplest operations, like opening Gmail or Yahoo accounts. It has become impossible to post a video, and opposition Web sites have been blocked. The government has also jammed opposition and news satellite channels, including Persian-language Voice of America television and BBC Persian, which were watched by millions.

The government has jailed many cyberexperts in recent months, charging some with “waging war against God,” potentially a capital crime, for sending political e-mail messages. This month Parliament announced a $500 million budget for cyberwarfare, the Fars news agency recently reported.

The opposition tried to fight back with software designed to circumvent the restrictions, but that became a losing battle after Internet service was slowed.

Opposition leaders say they would like to have access to Internet hardware — any products made by Cisco Systems, for example, are subject to sanctions — and high-speed satellite Internet service, which experts say is generally harder to jam than broadcasts. That service is available from the American company Hughes Global Services, in Europe and the Middle East, and could be used by Iranians. But Payam Herischi, senior director at Hughes, said that the company was reluctant to allow its satellites to provide service to Iran until sanctions are lifted.

“This is not about the opposition Green Movement in Iran now,” said Mr. Khoini, a visiting scholar at Stanford. “This is about democracy and the fact that when people have access to information, they can make wise choices. No one, even the current leaders of the opposition, can hijack the movement like the way the Islamists did in the 1979 revolution if people can have access to free information.”

BW:  U.S. Licenses Firm to Boost Iran Internet Access, Clinton Says

The U.S. issued a license to a company to boost Internet access for Iranians, though the government in Tehran will likely attempt to block U.S. efforts, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.

“We’re doing a lot, let me just put it at that, because we think it is in the interests of American values and American strategic concerns to make sure that people have a chance to know what is going on outside of Iran,” Clinton said in an interview with Bloomberg TV in Moscow today.

Clinton didn’t name the company or elaborate on what it would do to expand Iranians’ access to the Internet.

The Internet became the most important tool for opposition candidates in Iran’s June 12 presidential election as the government restricted their access to the airwaves and closed their newspapers.

Before the election, opposition campaigns circumvented government disruption of the Internet by relying on proxy servers that disguise a user’s location. They also turned to mobile-phone text messages and social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

MSNBC:  For cyberwarriors, murky terrain

Bildunterschrift: Internet censorship is a global problem

DW:  End of US export ban on Web tools leaves Iran, Cuba and Sudan speechless

The US decision to allow the export of Internet tools to Iran, Cuba and Sudan won’t bring about instant change. But it does make life harder for the censors – and the regimes in question can’t even complain about it.

BBC:  Meet US Cybercom: Why the US is fielding a cyber army

The US is in the process of creating a unified cyber command, to fight the wars of the future. The Pentagon has no doubt that the next conventional war will include a cyber element.

WAN-Press:  WAN-IFRA Condemns Detention of Iranian Journalists

The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) has condemned the continued imprisonment of Iranian journalist Emad Baghi and the repressive measures employed by the state to silence critical publications.

AFP:  Iran renews demand for France to free businessman

Iran renewed its demand on Tuesday for France to release an Iranian businessman who is accused by the United States of having purchased sensitive electronic components and exported them to Tehran.

MSNBC:  Bin Laden’s son calls on Iran to free his siblings

One of Osama bin Laden’s sons has called on Iran’s supreme leader to release members of his family believed to be under house arrest there since they fled Afghanistan in 2001, according to a letter posted Monday on the Internet.

Telegraph:  Iran ‘tried to buy nuclear weapons from Pakistan’

Iran attempted to buy nuclear weapons from Pakistan in 1990 but a putative deal was rejected at the last moment by the former head of the Pakistani military, according to an official transcript leaked in Washington.

AEI:  Iran News Roundup March 12-15, 2010

Mohammad Hashemi Rafsanjani, brother of the former president: “They say Islam is the religion of the barefoot and Ayatollah Hashemi gave them shoes by creating jobs, and therefore, reduced the number of the army of Islam. What kind of logic is this? Should we let the people starve to remain Muslim?…Whoever finds property belonging to the Rafsanjani family can seize it.”

RFE:  Iran Praises Iraq Election As Shi’ite Ally Leads

Iran has congratulated Iraqis over an election that is likely to keep a bloc led by its Shi’ite ally, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, in power after a campaign in which Tehran’s influence was a divisive issue.  Maliki’s main challenger, former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who headed a secular list mixing Shi’ite and Sunni Arabs, made a high-profile visit to Saudi Arabia during the campaign to improve ties with Iran’s biggest Sunni rival in the Persian Gulf region.

TB:  ‘Temporary Marriage’ and the Economy of Pleasure

CNN:  U.N. must stand up for rights of Iranians By Hadi Ghaemi and Aaron Rhodes – who are, respectively, executive director and policy adviser for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

The failure of the Human Rights Council to take serious action to condemn Iran’s human rights abuses, and the election of Iran to the Human Rights Council itself, will be deeply disillusioning for the reform and human rights movement in Iran. It could destroy their faith in the international human rights system, for which many have sacrificed their freedom and security, and for which many have died. It will give legitimacy to hanging political prisoners, and more will be hanged.

But this issue is not just about Iran. It is about the capacity of the U.N. system to protect human rights. If Iran’s grave abuses are ignored and if Iran assumes a place on the council, the council will be further weakened. Other dictatorial regimes will be emboldened to repress their citizens.

That is why it is crucial that members of the U.N. Human Rights Council make it clear to Iran, in a resolution that cannot be brushed off, that torturing and executing political prisoners is not acceptable. And that is why the U.N. General Assembly must reject Iran’s candidacy.

MSNBC:  Iran temporarily releases Iranian-American scholar Iran has temporarily released an Iranian-American scholar serving prison time on an espionage conviction so he can spend the Iranian New Year holiday with his family, officials said Sunday. Kian Tajbakhsh, a social scientist and urban planner, was the only American detained in the crackdown that crushed giant street protests by hundreds of thousands of people after June’s disputed presidential election.

P2E:  Interview with mother of Mostafa Karim Beigi 26 year old Mostafa lost his life on Ashura with a bullet to his forehead, as his body was pushed off the College bridge in Tehran. What follows is the interview conducted by Rooz website with Mostaf`s mother. After 14 days without any news on his fate, the body of her son was returned to her and was buried under tight security measures.

Q: You said that your son had gone to take part in the protest. Did he usually attend such gatherings?

A: Yea, since the summer of 1999 student uprising, he always attended the protests. And he was present at all the protests since the June 2009 election. He used to say that we would get our votes back, and we will not let them trample upon blood of the youth who had lost their lives. He was always saying that it is not clear how much blood will be shed before our children could live freely in the future. He constantly reminded me that if he gets arrested I shouldn’t go to Evin prison. He even said: “Your cry and begging before the officials is the worst type of torture for me. Don`t go there, even if they kill me. Don`t cry, don`t beg. Keep your head up…” Believe me in those 14 days, I never once went to Evin, his father used to go, despite the fact that my heart was in pain, I didn’t go.

New Ledger:  Iran: Jailhouse For Journalists

The fight for free access to information is being played out to an ever greater extent on the Internet. The emerging general trend is that a growing number of countries are attemptimg to tighten their control of the Net, but at the same time, increasingly inventive netizens demonstrate mutual solidarity by mobilizing when necessary.

The Internet: a space for information-sharing and mobilizing

In authoritarian countries in which the traditional media are state-controlled, the Internet offers a unique space for discussion and information-sharing, and has become an ever more important engine for protest and mobilization. The Internet is the crucible in which repressed civil societies can revive and develop.

The new media, and particularly social networks, have given populations’ collaborative tools with which they can change the social order. Young people have taken them by storm. Facebook has become the rallying point for activists prevented from demonstrating in the streets. One simple video on YouTube – Neda in Iran or the Saffron march of the monks in Burma – can help to expose government abuses to the entire world. One simple USB flashdrive can be all it takes to disseminate news – as in Cuba, where they have become the local “samizdats.”

Here, economic interest are intertwined with the need to defend free circulation of information. In some countries, it is companies that have obtained better access to the Internet and to the new media, sometimes with positive consequences for the rest of the population.As a barrier to trade,Web censorship should be included on the agenda of the WorldTrade Organization. Several of latter’s members, including China and Vietnam, should to be required to open their Internet networks before being invited to join the global village of international commerce…

Takeover

Yet times have changed since the Internet and the new media were the exclusive province of dissidents and opponents. The leaders of certain countries have been taken aback by a proliferation of new technologies and even more by the emergence of a new form of public debate. They had to suddenly cope with the fact that “Colored Revolutions” had become “Twitter Revolutions.” The vast potential of cyberspace can no longer be reserved for dissenting voices. Censoring political and social content with the latest technological tools by arresting and harassing netizens, using omnipresent surveillance and ID registration which compromise surfer anonymity – repressive governments are acting on their threats. In 2009, some sixty countries experienced a form of Web censorship, which is twice as many as in 2008. The World WideWeb is being progressively devoured by the implementation of national Intranets whose content is “approved” by the authorities. UzNet, Chinternet, TurkmenNet…It does not matter to those governments if more and more Internet users are going to become victims of a digital segregation. Web 2.0 is colliding with Control 2.0.

The Enemies of the Internet 2010

The “Enemies of the Internet” list drawn up again this year by Reporters Without Borders presents the worst violators of freedom of expression on the Net: Saudi Arabia, Burma, China, North Korea, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Uzbekistan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam.

Also see:

More governments are censoring the Internet

Go to Reporters Without Borders.

Free Iran:  This is how I feel when it comes to Iran.  Why so damn little coverage?  The future of the Islamic world is at stake!!!!