Iran's Hard-liners Turn a Censorious Eye on Web Journalists

The recent arrest of several bloggers, online journalists, and Internet technicians in Iran has raised fears that the country's old guard is determined to muzzle dissent in cyberspace.

The Internet has become a refuge for liberal journalists since the hard-line judiciary closed scores of reformist publications over the past four years. The Web log, or blog, format - a cross between a diary and public commentary - has allowed dissident writers to reach a mass audience with less of the expense and oversight of print media.

Government efforts to curtail this new forum are seen in Tehran as linked to the ascendancy of hard-liners who wrested control of parliament from reformers earlier this year after elections that many moderates were banned from contesting.

"They [hard-liners] see all these websites, including blogs, as newspapers they haven't been able to crack down on yet," says Hossein Derakhshan, a Canada-based Iranian blogger.

New laws covering "cyber crimes" were announced last week by the head of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahrudi. "Anyone who disseminates information aimed at disturbing the public mind through computer systems or telecommunications ... would be punished in accordance with the crime of disseminating lies," he declared.

At the same time, a judiciary spokesman said that people running unauthorized sites would soon be tried on charges including "acting against national security, disturbing the public mind, and insulting sanctities."

A foreign envoy in Tehran says: "My Iranian contacts are complaining that the size of the environment for free speech is getting smaller and ... that the electronic environment is now being concentrated on ... but it will be very difficult to stifle it all."

~Taken from http://www.csmonitor.com/