The confetti has settled and the US elections are quickly fading into the background. Americans voted for President Obama on Tuesday the 6th November, sealing his re-election. In the most expensive election campaign in the history of United States, as the Center for Responsive Politics [en] reported, Obama won 332 electoral votes against 206 of [...]
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Arseh Sevom — Prominent lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has been in prison in Iran since September 2010. Her defense of minors on death row as well as victims of human rights violations in Iran was repaid with loss of freedom and solitary confinement in Ward 209 of Evin Prison. Her charges included “activities against national security” [...]
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Arseh Sevom – The lives of six million patients in Iran are adversely affected due to shortages of medicine, as an immediate result of unprecedented sanctions. On top of the existing crippling sanctions, the European Union ministers agreed to a new set against Iran, on October 15, These new sanction ban the import of natural [...]
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Interview with Dr. Sara Bazoobandi, Economic Analyst by Reza Haji Hosseini Arseh Sevom – The shadow of sanctions is over Iran. Economic sanctions with the objective of putting pressure on the government are hitting ordinary people hard. Prices are rising moment by moment. The value of the currency is dropping, the price of gold is [...]
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The hashtag RememberIran is being used on Twitter to share memories from the events of three years ago in Iran. A small sample of the tweets follows: [View the story "RememberIran" on Storify]
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Arseh Sevom — Claims that Iran will launch a “national internet” at the end of August, cutting off access to Google, Hotmail, and other external services, were denied by communications minister Reza Taghipour. He issued a statement denying plans to cut access to the internet calling the whole thing a “13th of Farvardin prank” [the [...]
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Butcher of the Press leaves…Not! Regular readers of Arseh Sevom’s weekly review won’t be surprised to find that former Tehran prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, is topping headlines once again. This time with rumors of his resignation after a contested promotion to director of the biggest financial holding organization in Iran, Social Security Organization [Sazman-e Tamin-e Ejtema’ie]. [...]
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For those of you who read Arseh Sevom’s recent post about Walid Al-Saqaf (click here) and his circumvention tool, Alaksir, you know the Iranian government is cracking down on the internet using deep packet inspection. This means they are examining every piece of information going through the cyber pipes. Now Global Voices reports that a [...]
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Arseh Sevom — Reports from the Islamic Republic of Iran about internet speeds, work to create a parallel cyber Iran, and the growing success of filtering systems paint a picture of desperate efforts to exert control over the population. Iran is not alone in its efforts. North Korea has their own “intranet” called Kwang Myong (“light” or “hope, fair, just, open”). The North Korean version duplicates external content it deems acceptable. Iran’s new closed intranet is expected to do the same, in a cyber version of what the state already does in traditional media by cherry-picking content from international sources and editing or translating it in ways that often distort the original meaning.
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Arseh Sevom — For months now, Iranian state media has been slandering BBC Persian journalists, accusing them of a number of crimes including drug trafficking, sexual impropriety, and even rape. Recently, they also began detaining the family members of the journalists for questioning in the hopes of intimidating the foreign-based journalists.
“This is unprecedented in its level of viscousness,” BBC correspondent Kasra Naji tells Arseh Sevom. “We have not seen this level of brazen and vicious attacks before.”
“It is impossible to miss the pattern of arrests and intimidation from the regime against those who challenge the dominance of its hold on information,” says Arseh Sevom board president, Bert Taken. “We saw a sharp rise in arrests before the 2009 elections as well. This was particularly the case with women’s rights activists, reporters, and bloggers. The harassment of the families of human rights defenders, journalists, and others is a new low for Iran. We know the mother of an imprisoned human rights defender was imprisoned simply for speaking with the international media. Arseh Sevom asks the Iranian government to rescind these policies and to respect its citizen’s freedom of speech as guaranteed by its own constitution.”
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Arseh Sevom — Kaleme.com has published an open letter against the closing of the House of Cinema signed by nearly 2000 people and organizations. All of the House of Cinema’s affiliated guilds signed along with a large number of its 5000 members. This list includes a number of renowned Iranian filmmakers and actors.
The House of Cinema was one of the Islamic Republic’s oldest independent civil society organizations, tracing its roots back to the late 80s. It has consistently operated openly, publishing much of its documents online. Relations with the government became increasingly strained after the 2009 presidential elections finally culminating in its closure in December 2011 on a technicality.
More in Persian on Kaleme.com
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House of Cinema is one of the oldest post-revolution civil society organizations in Iran, in operation since 1989. You can read more about its overall objectives and more than two dozen affiliated organizations by clicking here. Arseh Sevom’s timeline of some of the events leading up to the dissolution of the House of Cinema can [...]
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