Conservative website Baztab blocked again

The website Baztab (www.baztab.com), close to the former commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohsen Rezai, highly critical of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, was banned by the State Council on 29 March. Iranian news agency ISNA, reported that supporters of the president had taken out 15 law suits against it. It was previously blocked on 12 February and 19 March for posting "false" news which "violated the Constitution", "damaging private life" or the "unity of the country". -------------------------- 20.03.07 - Authorities lift ban on website that criticised Ahmadinejad The Iranian authorities yesterday lifted a ban on the conservative website Baztab.com, one of the most visited sites in Iran. The ban was imposed on 12 February under regulations adopted on 27 November 2006 forbidding the publication of “false” information, “violating the constitution” and attacking “personal privacy” or “the country's unity.” The site had published reports on Iran's nuclear industry and on corruption in which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was criticised. ----------------------------- 19.02.07 - November decree used for first time to block websites Regulations adopted on 27 November with the aim of facilitating control of the Internet have been openly used for the first time by the Iranian authorities to justify blocking access to the conservative online publication Baztab.com, Reporters Without Borders said today. The press freedom organisation also confirmed that the photo-sharing site Flickr.com is not accessible in Iran, while several Internet Service Providers are still blocking YouTube.com and access to the Farsi-language pages of the Reporters Without Borders website (www.rsf.org) is being blocked with increasing frequency. "We condemned the November decree for various reasons," Reporters Without Borders said. "The first reason was the requirement for website editors to register with the authorities. Although impossible to implement, it provides grounds for arbitrarily closing online publications which the authorities do not like. The second reason was its creation of an 'Internet surveillance body' under the control of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Orientation that is supposed, inter alia, to combat the publication of 'false information'." The organisation added: "The authorities are making open use of the decree for the first time, and we see that the target is a website that supports Ayatollah Khamenei, in what is a war within the conservative camp. The regulations are almost certainly also being used to block access to 'immoral' sites such as Flickr or YouTube." The Baztab.com site was banned on 12 February for violating last November's rules, which forbid the publication of "false" information, "violating the constitution" and attacking "personal privacy" or "the country's unity." The site recently published reports on Iran's nuclear industry and on corruption in which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was lambasted (for an example of a Baztab article go to www.rsfblog.org). The site's editors have protested against the ban, insisting that parliament is responsible for anything to do with control of the media and that the November decree is "illegal" and "unconstitutional." Aside from the partial or complete blocking of the Flickr, YouTube and www.rsf.org websites, Reporters Without Borders has noticed that several news aggregators are also now banned in Iran. The blognews.1bn.eu site, which has a review of Farsi-language blogs, and balatarin.com, which allows visitors to vote on articles (on the model of the US site Digg) have both been blocked for several weeks. ------------- Create your blog with Reporters without borders: www.rsfblog.org