The country that tops the British Guardian’s list of countries in the world that have the most intense censorship of the web is Iran. In some ways Iran tries to block the web content even more severely than China does.
Reporters without borders assess the situation in the same way. The Iranian authorities not only use the method of closing down particular foreign sites, but have also forced the internet cafés to keep a log of who does what on the internet. Also, the internet traffic to other countries is deliberately slowed down. And it seems to have become even slower the nearer we are the elections in June. Apart from these more technical measures there are also the more familiar ones such as harassments by the police, and other similar groups related to those in power, of people who express themselves digitally. Reporters without borders claim that the authorities have closed down websites for the religious minority the Sufis and that they have arrested several bloggers and several lawyers who have defended these bloggers.
This rings of the familiar suppression of speech camouflaged by ideological excuses as it is encountered around the world. And so it is. But the interesting question is why Iran is salient in the statistics over countries that are desperately attempting to control the internet.
