Author: Hamid Tehrani

The Iranian state-run news website, Irna [fa] and ultra conservative newspaper Keyhan [fa] announced this month that members of Iran Proxy, a group fighting against censorship and filtering, had been arrested. The news sites also claimed in an announcement that the Iranian government had disrupted several “U.S. backed cyber war networks” and arrested 30 people. Iranian news sites did not mention how many of the arrested people belong to Iran Proxy group.

Iran Proxy has used twitter and their website in the fight against web filtering. In an interview with Radio Farda, a representative of the group said they have been working for six years in an ‘underground' fight against censorship.

Three months ago, the group announced on its website [fa] that due to financial pressures they were stopping their activities.

Keyhan reported that the leader of the group is a blogger named “Seyed Hussein Ronaghi Melki” whose pennames are Babak Khoramdin or Babak blogger. The newspaper claims the blogger was based in Tabriz and was involved in human rights activities. According to Keyhan he has been arrested by security forces.

Babak Khoramdin used [fa] the photo above on Twitter and his blog [fa] where he shared ideas on human rights and political issues.

Meanwhile, Iranian reformist websites announced [fa] that Mehdi Aboutorabi, founder of Persian Blog, a leading blog provider in country in the country had also been arrested. Aboutorabi was a supporter of the presidential campaign of one of Iran's main opposition leaders, Mir Hussein Mousavi. Since the presidential election on 12 June, the Iranian authorities have arrested hundreds of journalists and political activists, and also many bloggers. Aboutorabi's arrest has no relation to the Iran Proxy group.

Iranians marked, Charshanbeh Soori, a holiday that leads up to the Persian new year under the watchful eyes of riot police Tuesday night, after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei the Islamic Republic's leader discouraged the celebrations. Charshanbe Soori is a prelude to Nowrouz, the Persian New Year which starts on March 21 and marks the arrival of spring.

Iranians celebrated the festival by lighting bonfires and leaping over the flames in an act that symbolises a hope for happiness in the new year.

Several citizens filmed and reported this event where, in some cases, political slogans against the Iranian regime were chanted. In other cases people just celebrated by dancing.

Police confronting people in Haft Hoz district in Tehran

People chant against Ayatollah Khamenei in the northern city Rasht

Dancing in Bandar Anzali in the north of Iran

About 40 young people from all four corners of the world came together in a cafe in Dubai and remembered the first anniversary of the death of Iranian Omid Reza Mirsayafi, the first blogger to die in prison. The meeting also reflected on the March 18 Movement, OR318, via art.

Junkie, a team member of March 18 explained the planning of this meeting saying:

I was thinking of organising a Tweetup (and arranging for a community-made art piece for the Movement on Thursday, 18 March.
The art piece would comprise of a large canvas where supporters of the movement can gather and express what freedom of speech means to them. They can use any conceivable medium – pictures, drawings, poetry, or even a plain ol' simple “I want free speech. kthxbai” scrawled across the canvas to convey their messages.

Here are some of these art creations.

Against censorship

For Freedom of Expression

Here is a video film showing the event in Dubai:

OR318 -March 18 Movement – Dubai Edition from Areeba Hanif on Vimeo.

March 18 Movement uses animations to reach out to a large and young audience. Its second animation already received 75,000 hits. It was featured on the global homepage of YouTube on the 12th of March.

President Obama sends a message to those celebrating the Persian holiday of Nowruz (Norouz), and in particular to the people and government of Iran. Here is the message in You Tube with Persian subtitles.

Balatarin web community is raising money for Iranian journalist refugees. The goal is to raise 15000 dollars.

Mir-Hussein Mousavi, one of Iranian opposition leader, and his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, used You Tube to deliver his new year,Noruz, message. He called Iranian people will face very difficult economic situation next year and country has been very isolated in international community. He praised “Green Movement” [Iranian opposition movement] and says the struggle goes on.

Several news sites reported that Hossein Derakhshan's mother has called on the head of Iran's judiciary to release her son for the Iranian New Year, or Norouz, marked on March 21. Hossein, has been in your prison for more than 500 days. And we have been waiting for him outside the prison every day,” she writes. Derakhshan is one of Iranian jailed bloggers.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and Google honoured the online journalists of the women's rights website we-change on 12 March with the first “Netizen Prize”, a new annual award for those who defend freedom of expression online. RSF's report on “Internet Enemies” was released on the same day.

Parvin Ardalan from we-change accepted the award at Google's Paris offices. The Iranian women's movement has always shown resistance… Now the movement is bringing its experience and methods of working democratically into cyberspace.

The we-change website has been a supporter of a virtual campaign called One Million Signatures Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws. The campaign calls for putting an end to discrimination against women in Iranian law. It is a follow-up to the peaceful protest of the same aim, which took place on 12 June, 2006 in Haft-e Tir Square in Tehran.

Here is a video film where we-change introduces its aims and history:

Parvin Ardalan also won an Olaf Palme Prize in 2007, but the Iranian government did not permit her to leave country to accept it in person. She recorded this message on You Tube.

Meanwhile several Iranian bloggers including Shiva Nazarahari, a female blogger and human rights activist, have been jailed since the 12 June presidential election.

Zahra's paradise ,a graphic novel, is the fictional story of the search for Mehdi, a young protestor who has disappeared in the Islamic Republic’s gulags.”

The internet is usually touted as a space for dialogue and peaceful exchange, but in the case of Iran, the political conflict has also morphed into new forms of online “warfare” where the most powerful weapons are those that silence free speech.

Below, are three major initiatives – both failed and successful – that we could call innovations in militarism on the internet.

Political hacking

The Iranian Cyber Army is just one example out of several militant Islamic initiatives that have only grown more fervent since the elections in June 2009. This hacker group is perhaps the strongest Iranian or Iran-related militant Islamist project on the internet. They have successfully targeted websites in several countries, illustrating that the internet truly has no borders, and that even big-name websites can be fragile against unknown attackers.

The army’s victims go beyond the usual targets such as independent Iranian news websites like Zamaneh or Green Movement ones like Jaras and Kalameh. On December 18 2009, they were able to bring down the international micro-blogging site Twitterr. The service had been used by many Iranian protesters to make news headlines. The message left by the group during the one hour that Twitter was hacked illustrates their ideology:

THIS SITE HAS BEEN HACKED BY IRANIAN CYBER ARMY [email protected]
U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But THey Don't, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples To….
NOW WHICH COUNTRY IN EMBARGO LIST? IRAN? USA?

On its own website, the Iranian Cyber Army has left several messages and warnings, including that foreign servers are no guarantee of safety for Iranian sites and blogs; that personal information about site owners will be divulged; and they have also issued a special warning to pro-Green website Mowjcamp. Finally, they threaten that a virtual attack is considered a first step, but they do not expand on further steps.

For unknown reasons, the Iranian Cyber Army also hacked the popular Chinese search engine, Baidu in January 2010. Many online commenters guessed that it had to do with expressed support for the Iranian Green Movement by Chinese netizens.

A failed blogging expansion project

At the end of 2008,  The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) made an historic announcement to launch 10,000 blogs in support of the paramilitary Basij forces. IRGC’s official publication, Sobh Sadegh, wrote that the IRGC considered the Internet and other digital devices including mobile SMS as a threat to be controlled. It announced that the 10,000 blogs would promote revolutionary ideas. The IRGC considers the Internet an instrument for  “velvet revolution” (non-violent overthrow of government by foreign influence) and warned that enemy nations have invested in this tool to topple the Islamic Regime. The project never came to fruition, but it would have been the biggest military blogging project.

Crowd sourcing identities

In March 2009, the IRGC cracked down on several groups who had set up anti-Islamic and pornographic Internet websites. Around the same time, the organized-crime-fighting unit of the IRGC  launched a website named Gerdab (meaning ‘vortex') where news and photos of arrested people were published. During the post-election protests in 2009, Gerdab published photos of protesters, and asked the Iranian public to help identify them. Islamist militants were crowd sourcing information in the virtual world to target real people.

The Iranian Cyber Army shares some charateristics of Gerdab, but their is no real evidence of an official connection between the two. Iran's official news/propaganda agency, IRNA once claimed that the Iranian Cyber Army were a project of the IGRC, but this has never been confirmed. It is not known who the hackers are nor where they are based, only that they target “Iranian opposition websites”.

Two Iranian bloggers who asked to remain anonymous even speculated that the Iranian Cyber Army could be based in China or be helped by Chinese hackers, and that targeting Baidu may have been an attempt to blur this.

The death of dialogue

The dream of the internet is that it could become a virtual environment where Islamists and non-Islamists could dialogue instead of shooting each other. We've seen small instances where it has happened. For example, once about three and half years ago, Islamist and non-Islamists Iranian bloggers debated online the pros and cons of martyrdom. Today, the emphasis on both sides is on beefing up both virtual and real world elimination.

It's only fair to mention that supporters of the Iranian opposition have employed similar attack methods. A group that calls itself The Green Cyber Army targeted a a Basij militia website (moghavemat.ir) in 2010 and has threatened others; several pro-opposition bloggers have uploaded photos of people alleged to be undercover security agents; and the hacking of state websites by anonymous groups is ordinary business.

The victims of all this activity are not only the hacked websites, but the future potential for communication and greater understanding between Iranian citizens online.

In Ahwaznews, an Iranian blog we read [fa]:”Starting March 6, We the Workers of Vahed Company [bus drivers] Will Wage Acts of Civil Disobedience (or white strike) to Protest the Condition of Mansoor Osanloo in Prison. We Appeal to the Iranian People and to the Democratic Green Movement–of which we consider ourselves a small part–to join us by creating a deliberate traffic jam in all directions leading to Valiasr Square.”

ZoHre has published several photos of Iranian women in Tehran's Metro.

Protesters of the Green Movement staged demonstrations in several Iranian cities on February 11 (the anniversary of the Iranian revolution) but were not able to mobilize as strongly as they have in the past due to the swift work of security forces and a major pro-government rally. Protesters did manage to defy security forces in some cities, including Tehran and Isfahan.

Several bloggers and netizens refelected on this day.

Making fun of Greens

Ahestan, a pro-government blogger, mocked the Green Movement and said [fa]:

After the February 11 demonstrations, green movement supporters will probably say things like: ‘Tehran became green', ‘greens were censored on national TV', ‘Tehran was conquered by greens'.

Shukhoshang wrote [fa]:

Now the greens will say ‘Enough with demonstrations, tomorrow we will start strikes. I won't drink orange juice to push state-run orange juice factories into bankruptcies, and you can stop eating caviar.'

Lessons to learn

Iran88, a pro-green blogger, thinks that the February 11 demonstrations did not happen as the green activists expected. The blogger adds:

Disappointment comes when we are fixed on unrealistic goals, [the protest movement] is like a marathon. If we don't learn our lesson we will be defeated… We should add economic requests to political and social ones… Some in the movement do not tolerate criticism… We should not listen to people who are outside Iran… We should not limit ourselves to government celebrations and events.

Karroubi, an opposition leader was attacked

Mehdi Karroubi, a cleric and one of the opposition leaders was attacked by pro-government forces when he took part in a demonstration:

Demonstration in Tehran

Despite the strong presence of security forces, protesters in Tehran chanted slogans to support one of the opposition leaders, Mir Hussein Mousavi:

… and in Isfahan

Green Movement supporters also demonstrated in different cities outside Iran, including in London when they chanted slogans in front of Iran's embassy and called for Iran's ambassador to resign:

A video film showing clashes in Tehran between anti regime protesters and security forces today on the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.

A film showing the Iranian opposition in the streets of Isfahan on the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. Here are some photos of pro government demonstrations in country.

While President Ahmadinejad spoke to a crowd of thousands at Azadi, or Freedom Square, in central Tehran on the anniversary of the revolution, anti regime protesters demonstrated and called for referendum in Tehran. Watch the video here.

Iran's Green Movement is ready to defy the Iranian regime with protests once again – this time during the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution on 11 Februrary (22 Bahman). During this week the Iranian State will celebrate the day that marked the end of the Iran's western-backed monarchy and the beginning of an Islamic republic. According to news reports from inside Iran, internet access, email, and text-messaging services have been disrupted the past days in advance of the protests.

The Iranian opposition has protested since June 2009 against the Iranian government and the alleged manipulation of the presidential election's results.

Iranian citizen media and artists commented on the upcoming day of protest and created art works.

Soheil Tavakoli, a creative artist has created a dramatic new video montage of digital paintings (part 3 of a series). At the end of the video the artist envisions victory for the Green Movement and a free Iran – where even clerics are willing to be photographed next to women wearing skirts and no veils!

United4Iran that coordinates and amplifies the voices of activists, academics, NGOs, artists, and others who desire to work on issues related to human and civil rights in Iran, also published a video to inform about demonstrations outside Iran related to 11 February.

Green Wave Voice aslo created a trailer for the 11 February demonstration where the words “courage”, “loyality” and “democracy” have been emphasised.

Oonvar Donya, Iranian blogger, says [fa] eight Iranian got arrested in Copenhagen, Denmark after they threw green paint at Iranian embassy. Watch the photos here.

Two bloggers and members of the “Committee of Human Rights” (Chrr), Mehrdad Rahimi and Kouhyar Goudarzi (photographed above: Goudarzi, left, and Rahimi, right) have been accused of wanting to wage “a war against God,” and charged as being “Mohareb” (enemies of God). Their charges are similar to those against the two men who were executed this week in Tehran. Reporters without Borders writes other bloggers who are members of the committee have also been arrested in recent weeks. They are Parisa Kakei, who was arrested on January 2; Shiva Nazar Ahari on December 24; and Said Kanaki and Said Jalali on December 1. They are all still being held in Section 209 of Tehran’s notorious Evin prison and are being subjected to considerable pressure to name other members of the committee and to call for it to be disbanded.

Chrr writes [fa] that Mehrdad Rahimi is under pressure to do a “television confession.”

This organization adds:

Koohyar Goodarzi, journalist and human rights activist, has reportedly been transferred from solitary confinement to a three-person cell in Ward 209 of Evin prison. Goodarzi has been detained since December 20, 2009.

It is not clear that how much their blogging activities played in their arrest but both of them used to blog on human rights issues.

Mehrdad Rahimi in his blog talked about diverse social, political and economic issues such as labour rights. He once wrote:

Many got arrested for months without any right to have access to any lawyer.

Koohyar Goodarzi in a long post asked for freedom for other members of the Committee of Human Rights.

Iranian authorities have jailed several bloggers such as Hossien Derakhshan in recent years. Omid Reza Mir Sayafi, a 29-year old Iranian blogger and journalist died in Evin Prison in Tehran on March 18, 2009.

Iranian Cyber Army hacked Netherlands based Radio Zamaneh. The message on the hacked site says in Persian: “you who betray your country are not safe even when you are with your masters.” Iranian Cyber army recently hacked Twitter and Chinese Baidu but does not claim any direct link with Iranian government.