Slapping back
Bloggers unite against censorship
September 22, 2004
iranian.com
An unprecedented protest campaign is under way
by Iranian web community against Iran's ruling hardliners. Many
bloggers (web loggers) based in Iran and around the world have
renamed their sites to Emrooz (means
today in Persian) for this entire week to protest the harassment
and blocking of a popular
news site named Emrooz.
[See: Crckdown
on reformist websites]
The Emrooz site
is closely tied to Iranian regime's moderate faction, lead by
the now lame duck president,
Mohammad Khatami. The site renaming campaign is also aiming
to protest the recent wave of ISP closings, harassment and arrests
of editors, writers and even in some cases server administrators
who are associated with some of the dissident web sites!
There
is even a case where the father of a dissident blogger who
writes in exile from Europe was arrested in Tehran to force him
into
silence!
I know that as young as the Internet is, there have already been
many protest efforts, petitions and email drives around the world
and against the governments that have attempted to control and
limit the use of the Web by their subjects and citizens.
But I
am unaware of such concerted efforts related to the new medium
of blogging which due to its interactive and participatory
nature provides a potent and effective medium for political content.
So, this is a ground breaking and historical move by Iran's bloggers.
What is particularly troubling to the Ayatollahs is that many
satirists, cartoonists, feature writers and political analysts
who had been put out of work and kicked off their podiums by the
serial closings of the undesirable print media outlets have chosen
the blogging medium to continue their work.
Blogging has been especially
attractive to those activists who were sidelined or even left
the country after the press crack down that followed the brief
period
of freedom heralded by President Khatami's election in the spring
of 1997. In fact, almost all of the more popular writers in the
Persian blogsphere used to work for one or more of the reformist
papers and magazines that are no longer in print.
With their total and unchallenged control of radio and television,
and the complete cutback on Khatami-enacted print freedoms, the
last medium for the hardliners to put down is the Internet. The
newly inaugurated Majlis (parliament) that is filled with hardliners,
thanks to a doctored-up election last year has made it a priority
to address and fix the "Internet problem"!
Unfortunately, as important as the Emrooz protest campaign is,
it is bound to go almost entirely unnoticed and will be unheard
by the overwhelming majority of Iranians, including many educated
and intellectual Iranians who are either not involved and connected
to the Internet or not particularly interested in and paying attention
to web logging!
But the Ayatollahs are taking no chances! This
is definitely a fight with the future in mind. The use of Internet
and its exposure to the masses will no doubt rise in Iran, and
the rulers want to make sure that their complete control of broadcast
and print media will not be compromised by the Web.
Ironically, a slap in the face of Iran's ruling class is
that many leading bloggers and Internet activists are the sons
and daughters of Islamic Republic's founding and ruling class.
In fact, this week's Emrooz protest campaign was first proposed
by a popular blogger who is living and writing against the Mullahs
hard line policies from his apartment in Canada!
This gentleman's
father was and is a prominent Islamic activist and an early booster
of the Islamic regime in Tehran's bazaar establishment and
very much responsible for the existence of the regime! More than
anything else, this ironic phenomenon demonstrates the complete
failure of the Ayatollahs' efforts and programs for quarter
of a century to find legitimacy and acceptance with Iran's
youth!
 Another interesting detail is that this campaign has a name and
a face! The Islamic Republic's judiciary has organized a
special task force to fight the proliferation of dissidence on
the Web. This effort is headed by a young over-zealous judge named
Saeed Mortazavi.
Mr. Mortazavi's official position and title
is Tehran's Prosecutor General, but he has adopted the fight
for the control of the Internet (!) as his pet project. Incidentally,
this is the same man who has been widely implicated in the murder
of Iranian-Canadian photo-journalist Zahra Kazemi who died while
in custody of Tehran's judiciary operatives last year!
So, in a nutshell, Mr. Mortazavi wants to control and fight the
Internet, as so plainly stated by him and his deputies! In addition
to ISP closings, web address blocking (known as filtering) and
blogger arrests, their project includes a consistent and widespread
mudslinging campaign against the use of Internet by children and
young adults in general. Apparently the plan is to use the bad
aspects of the Internet such as porn and other mischief to turn
the mostly uneducated and unaware parent community against their
children's use of the Internet!
Mr. Mortazavi's job and the ruling Ayatollahs fight against
the spread of the Internet reminds me of those old classic Tarzan
movies showing am expedition trapped in the depth of the African
jungle and the feeling of helplessness and inevitable demise as
the circle of siege by the cannibal natives around them tightened
while the drums of annihilation kept beating louder and louder.
 Except in this case, the judge and his Ayatollahs are the cannibals
who find themselves trapped inside of that self-made fort and
they are no doubt going to be over run, sooner or later! If you
ever
think that your job is overwhelming and sometimes pointless,
just think of Judge Mortazavi's task!
Before the drums stop beating and the Mullahs' time, along
with the patience of the Iranian youth, runs out someone needs
to tap Mortazavi on the shoulder and hand him an old Tarzan video
tape to go home and watch! We know how those movies always ended!
They can't possibly have enough bullets in that fort!
.................... Say
goodbye to spam!
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