All Blog Posts from World Watch

A new generation of Iranians has found ways to bypass the country's notoriously censorial Internet restrictions and disseminate details about Iran's internal turmoil in the wake of the recent election.

In technical circles, at least, Iran is well-known for erecting one of the world's most restrictive Internet blockades, second only to China in its scope. Certain blogs are cordoned off, politically-unacceptable keywords are blocked, and Web sites like Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, the BBC, and YouTube remain -- at least at the moment -- off-limits.

That has complicated the task of distributing videos and e-mail descriptions of the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marching in the streets to protest the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Supporters of reformist leader Mir Hossein Mousavi have alleged that the election was a fraud.

But the government's censors have been unable to staunch every data leak. "The bottom line is that a lot of information is still getting out," says Zahir Janmohamed, advocacy director of the Middle East and North Africa for Amnesty International USA.

Some of the online restrictions appeared around the time of the election: that's when Facebook, BBC English (BBC Persia was already blocked), Technorati.com, and YouTube were added to the verboten-in-Iran list. One report says that YouTube's traffic from Iran has dropped by 90 percent in the last few days, and another says that Yahoo Messenger was blocked early Wednesday. Unconfirmed reports from Iran say Twitter.com is also blocked.

Read full post…

Iran's hard-line regime, starting to show stress under the mounting pressure of massive opposition rallies, has told foreign media that if they're seen on the streets of Tehran today with a camera, they will be arrested.

Since the contested election results were announced just hours after polls closed on Friday, images of thousands of thousands-strong protests — some turning violent — have streamed out of Iran's capital city.

Tuesday, the regime's Ministry of Islamic Guidance, which strictly controls where all foreign media go and who they speak to in Iran, told CBS News and, we believe, all other Western media, that the rally scheduled by opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi's supporters for Tuesday afternoon was illegal, and so, therefore, was covering it.

But the ban is much broader than that, extending to any coverage in Tehran whatsoever.

Read full post…