Global Voices

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The world is talking, are you listening?

The official report on Internet status in Iran by March 2012 indicates the influence rate is 43 percent, with 32.7 million users nationwide, 14.3 millions (18.9 %) connected to GPRS on their cellphones as the most common connection type, 4.5 millions of them connected through broadband ADSL, and about 860 thousands have access to wimax connection.

A report from a state-run institute says 20 percent of women and 10 percent of men in Iran, choose their wear and public appearance due to the photos they see on social networking websites like Facebook, a deputy at Iran's ‘IT and digital media development center’ presented this report in Iran News TV.

The state-funded group, “The Islamic Revolution Council of IT and Digital Media Activists” have asked Mark Zuckerberg in an open letter to take action against those who ‘insult Islam’ in Facebook and prosecute them. They compared those who ‘insult Islam’ in Facebook to terrorist attacks in Iraq against Shia people and shrines.

In social networking websites Iranian users are sharing a video footage of jailed lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, when she tries to play with her 4 years old son through a cabin window in a prison visit. Mrs. Sotoudeh, a human rights activist in Iran, is sentenced to 11 years in prison and authorities have denied furlough leave for her.

Iranian users in Twitter are sharing their ideas, memories, and feelings about Iranian 10th presidential election in June 2009, which resulted in protests called The Green Movement under the hash-tag #RememberIran. There are some tweets reminding that two protests leaders have been under house arrest for 480 days.

Iranian former president and now head of The Expediency Council, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani who is close to reformists says: ‘Today we see that a simple free page on Facebook is effective more than a set of TV and radio stations… And this is good for the world even if some people don't like it'.

Iran's Revolutionary Guardians'would hold cultural programs in Facebook and Twitter', an official in IRGC says. This two major social networks are blocked in Iran and users can check them only with circumvention tools. Iranian authorities blame such websites for ‘promoting regime change’ in this country.

An online campaign against lashes for Iranian cartoonist turned to be successful. Mahmoud Shokrayeh was sentenced to 25 lashes for a caricature of a local MP, Ahmad Lotfi. Iranian cartoonists launched a campaign on Facebook and cyberspace to draw Mr. Lotfi's cartoons in condemning this verdict. You can see some of this cartoons here. Eventually the MP announced that he is withdrawing his complaint.

According to official statistics,28.5 millions of Iranians are estimated to have access to Internet connection in 1154 cities of Iran. This figures says more than 2.1 millions of this Iranian users have ADSL connection and the rest are connected via dial-up. Iranian government has restricting rules for Internet connection of citizens and only academic and business users can have broadband connections more than 128 kbps.

Iran's minister of communications prohibited using ‘foreign’ mail services like Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, and MSN, since he believes ‘they are tools for information leak'. Reza Taghipour has asked Iranian state offices, universities and companies to use Iranian mail services ‘which are hosted in Iran'.