Iran: The next revolution starts here
: What would you ask the president of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, about the Internet? Well, here’s your chance to ask.
David Steven, who’s running a blog at the U.N. summit in Geneva, asked a question of the U.S. ambassador on behalf of me yesterday. n
Now he wants to us to give him questions to ask the president of Iran.
Simple.
One question, Mr. President:
Will you pledge today to assure your citizens the right of unrestricted access to the Internet?
Yes or no.
There is no middleground.
Paint. Corner.
: Hossein Derakhshan (aka Hoder), the Iranian weblog pioneer, has managed to get attention from big media — the BBC online — for the cause of Internet freedom in Iran. Read the story here.
Iranian internet users have been venting their frustration at online censorship on a website devoted to the UN’s digital summit in Geneva.
Hundreds of people have posted complaints online in the hope of reaching key summit delegates, after some web users in Iran found they could no longer access parts of the Google search engine.
The Iranian government’s tight controls force net service providers to block thousands of political and pornographic websites….
Noted Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan, now based outside the country, began to receive e-mails from his readers, and the story was soon published on a number of Iranian sites.
A weblog, dailysummit.net, picked up the story in advance of the beginning of the UN’s digital summit, and was soon inundated with people trying to make their voice heard.
Mr Derakhshan, who was previously involved in the campaign to free a jailed Iranian blogger, said people want to “grab the attention of delegates and participants in Geneva.”
“The Iranian officials are very defensive over these kind of things”, said Mr Derakshan, “and if there is enough public pressure, they’d definitely change their attitudes.”
