In an open letter to the “revolutionary Iranian people”, the Pasdaran, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, announced their fight against the “activities of organised destructive networks in cyberspace”. The Pasdaran also claimed that the aim of the network operators is to lead Iranian youth astray and that they had been encouraged and financially supported by the “largest foreign companies and small terrorist groups and by the counterrevolution”. The focus of criticism is not simply Iranian hardcore pornographic films, but rather those internet operators that “pursue the diabolical objectives of the enemies of the Islamic Revolution” and that , according to the Pasdaran, are “endangering Iran’s general security”.Some of these networks have apparently been “identified and destroyed” using the “intelligent and resolute” measures of the Pasdaran’s information departments.
Although the flag of the Revolutionary Guards features a fist holding a machine gun, and the outline of the globe in the background, they are now using sophisticated techniques for conducting their operations against “internet enemies”. They say they have founded a “centre for investigating crime in cyberspace”, which fights “anti-cultural and counterrevolutionary networks”.
Interestingly, the term “counterrevolutionary” derives from Communist state ideology. Terms like “anti-cultural” or “anti-values” are in fact neologisms created by Islamist ideology, but they show the extent of the totalitarian delusion. What is permitted is not a pluralism of values, but instead an Islamist interpretation of what counts as true values. And what are the consequences of all this? If a woman does not want to wear a headscarf, if a young man wants to wear T-shirts in the hot summer, if a Christian priest wants to talk openly with Muslims and non-Muslims in Farsi about his faith, if a Muslim does not want to accept the Shiite state clergy’s absolute will to dominate and has a different notion of Islam, if a Bahai believes in a revelation of God who in his view appeared after Mohammed, if an Iranian Jew wishes to travel to Israel in freedom and return to his home in Iran again – all these people, according to the regime, represent “anti-values” and are behaving “anti-culturally” thus representing a threat to the State.
But will the dictatorship be able to win also against Iranian exiles’ satellite broadcasters that are sometimes identified as operators of a velvet revolution? On 18 March the Human Rights Activists organisation reported that the blogger Omid Mirsajafi died in prison for lack of medical treatment. Before he was arrested, Mirsajafi stressed in an interview, that he was only writing about art and culture in his blog. Nevertheless, he was accused of “insulting the sanctuaries of Islam” and arrested. While one among the most peaceful dissenters is consigned to prison, the “central hub” of the dictatorship, in cyberspace it will be impossible to execute dissenters, not even with the aid of the state-of-the-art filtering systems that Iran has bought from China.
VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Last March, the organisation Human Rights Activists in Iran issued an annual report on human rights violations in Iran. A total of 278 people had been condemned to death, 30 of whom were aged under 18. And 297 people had been executed, including 8 aged under 18.
According to the report, the pressure on blog writers has progressively grown during the course of the year. Thousands of websites and blogs have been filtered, banned or closed down. Some 29 periodicals have also been banned and over 70 journalists had been brought before justice. Of these, according to the report, 21 have been fined, while 17 have received prison sentences.
Students were not immune from the repression: 66 students had to pay large fines, while 215 students were imprisoned. Over 60 student newspapers were also banned and a total of 234 students were suspended for a number of university terms. Bahai students faced even harsher punishments: they were expelled from universities.
The Human Rights Report also highlighted how also the situation of Iranian workers had deteriorated during the course of the year, with about 11,000 workers laid off and legal proceedings instituted against at least 26 workers.
Tens of thousands of women have been detained for “failing to comply with Islamic dress codes”. Security forces issued summons against 25 female activists, interrogating them and putting them under pressure. Another 40 female activists had been condemned to long prison sentences and were now languishing behind bars. And several women had been in prison for some time without any court ruling.
On 18 March, the newspaper Kayhan published a political analysis of the “defeat of the financial terrorism of the West against Iran” and of how financial sanctions against Iran have historically failed. According to the article, the West was defeated in its attempts to isolate Iran and to stop its nuclear programme. The analysis also provides detailed examples of how Western powers had systematically used economic instruments as political leverage against Iran and argues that Iran, today, is by no means isolated. As evidence, the article points to the various contracts for the development of some 10 oil and gas installations worth USD 61 billion that have been signed with various foreign governments or companies over the past 20 months. These include: a contract worth USD 107 million signed with Italian company Edison International, concerning drilling in the Persian Gulf; a contract worth USD 500 million with a Belarusian oil company to expand an oil installation; two contracts totalling over USD 18 billion signed with Chinese companies; contracts worth around USD 15 billion have been signed with Malaysian companies (including SKS); a contract worth USD 115 million with Vietnamese company Petro-Vietnam, along with a contract worth USD 142 million signed with the Croatian company INA. Spanish and Australian companies are also part of this list.
Contracts for gas supplies have been signed with Syria, Switzerland, Sri Lanka, Poland, Ecuador and Oman, although again, no details are provided. Also in the gas exports sector, a new contract worth EUR 2.625 billion was signed with a Chinese company, in March 2009.
The secretary-general of the Iranian Hezbollah, Ayatollah Dr Seyyed Mohammad Baqer Kharazi, has unequivocally admitted his regime’s nuclear plans, saying that there will be no relations with the United States until Tehran has nuclear bombs. According to the Shabestan news agency, he said: “If one is not allowed to have nuclear bombs, one cannot have relations with the United States. And if we are to have relations, then we also need a nuclear bomb.”
In an article published on 18 March 2009 in the reformist newspaper Etemaddemeli, Iranian economist Nader Hushmandyar questioned the truthfulness of official statements according to which Iranian oil had been nationalised. The reality on the ground indicates the opposite, considering that, according to Hushmandyar, who is also a member of the scientific council of Tehran’s Alame Tabatabai University, Iranian economy depends on oil and at the same time poverty and injustice have been increasing systematically.
Hushmandyar points out that, in the past four years alone, Iran has sold more than USD 280 billion of oil, experiencing the highest oil revenue in its history, but at the same time the country’s inflation rate has reached over 26%. Hushmandyar argues that in reality, in spite of the regime rhetoric, oil has not been nationalised and this is confirmed and demonstrated by growing unemployment and greater economic problems of the population. He points out that the economy is stagnating because society has no capital to drive the engine of economic growth and adds that oil-reliant countries generally operate a unreasonable economic policies. Hushmandyar’s conclusive remark is that that national capital is being wasted and thus creating the basis for producing a national catastrophe.
