Cries for Help from Iranian Web Activists Go Unheeded
On the social media front, the Iranian opposition is struggling hard, the Tehran regime is energetic, but the U.S. government is barely trying.
After the apparently stolen 2009 presidential election, a vigorous protest movement arose and was repressed on the streets. But in the absence of a free press, the Internet became the opposition’s tool to tell the world what was happening inside the country. Pictures and video of repression circled the world, and millions of people saw Iranians like Neda Agha-Soltan being shot in cold blood.
Responding to the situation, the Iranian regime cracked down on cyberspace, too. It even created a cyber police force, Satup, and passed new laws for monitoring the Internet and arresting cyber activists. Reportedly, it has imported equipment from China to monitor citizens’ activities and break codes to read mail while identifying anonymous dissidents who send news or messages. The repression of bloggers and threats of arrest make it far harder for Iranian cyber activists to get news out of the country or to obtain information from abroad.
“Parham,” an Iranian activist who has now fled to Turkey, recounts his first interrogation after being arrested:
“The interrogator put a folder in front of me. He read a few lines and then looked to me and said, `You have been checking BBC Persian and Voice of America’s websites on a daily basis for the past year. You know it is against the law to go to these websites. We have all the details about your activities online during the past two years. Then he asked me to tell him who my friends are.’”
The Obama administration, however, has not fulfilled the plan of Bush-era Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to spend $75 million to promote pro-democracy groups inside Iran. Instead, Iranian democracy groups received nothing and the State Department spent the money on U.S.-based think tanks and to fund a vast expansion of the Voice of America’s Persian News Network (VOAPNN).
what? You want Obama’s help? hmmm, sorry you got the wrong claim. He doesnt care about freedom fighters. But if you’re a race baiter or a jew hater he’ll probably talk to you. Freedom? Forget about it… He s sinking america.
Actually there are two things the US government can do. First stop companies dealing with the Hezbollah regime to trade with US. Second don’t refer to the activities of Hezbollah as Iranian. We Iranians abroad have got our own sites and can get the message out. But agencies still report on killings by Hezbollah as Iranian.
“Second don’t refer to the activities of Hezbollah as Iranian.” Why would you be hurt by the truth?
Because the regime is an occupying regime, not Iranian in core, but an Hezbollah regime ruling a “secular people” with an iron fist shoving Islam and its putrefied cult down its throats. That’s why.
Many people of the world do not understand that Iranians have thousands years of culture OUTSIDE the Islamic cult. Islam had never and will never be accepted in the sub conscious of Iranian people, even though the occupying Islamic regime ( a non Iranian regime) resorts to all sorts of treachery, torture and murder to force it.
“The best way to help Iranian activists is to provide technical help to get around the government’s Internet filtering.”
In the old days, such as during the Cold War, the form of technical help we provided was “Radio Free Europe.” It gave people behind the Iron Curtain some hope that there were other people out there who understood what they were going through and that we were trying to help. But with the Internet, we now have an interactive way of actually communicating with people who are forced to live under repressive regimes. We can actually have conversations with these people, either through Skype or some of the other social-network web sites, such as Twitter or Face Book. We would be foolish not to take advantage of this. We should be pouring millions of dollars into assisting any local Iranian groups in spreading this technology and protecting it from Iranian government supression or jamming.
The best way to overthrow the mullahs in Iran is from within the country through a popular rebellion. Obama foolishly missed his best chance to do this after the riots broke out in Iran after the 2009 “elections.” But we still have a chance to let these people know what’s actually going on in the outside world by enabling them to get on the Internet and to communicate with people in the outside world. If we follow this up with more CIA operatives on the ground actually providing rebel groups with weapons, money, and military training, the Iranians may actually stand a chance in overthrowing their government. This is a much better (and much cheaper) solution than having to stop this country militarily at a later date.
“If we follow this up with more CIA operatives on the ground actually providing rebel groups with weapons, money, and military training, the Iranians may actually stand a chance in overthrowing their government. ”
They don’t want weapons or military training or boots on the ground. The money and help with the internet filtering would go a long way to help but they want to do it themselves peacefully by demonstrations and the ability to show the world what the regime is really like. If it comes to having to use force to overthrow these thugs in charge then we have to wait until the people of Iran ask us for that kind of help. If we go charging in there now it will just cause the people on the fence to unite behind the regime to defeat the invader infidels.
The unmentioned hero in this story is NEDA!
It is this martyr Iran has to inspire itself on. A Representative Democracy will be possible in Iran, if a Founding Few, of like minds…in meetings, lays out a series of necessary steps Iran must go thru to:1) Establish a workable set of Principled Philosophies, 2) Engage the current Regime with these Principled Philosophies and 3) Execute peaceful resistance if an accord is not possible with Iran’s current Regime. Easy to say, very hard to do. Model its planning on successful Nations having executed similiar regime changes.
It works every time…Ghandi is one example that comes to mind.
It is significant to note that peaceful / non-violence has only worked when those being protested against were unwilling to commit mas-murder. Gandhi, is a prime example of just that. Are you old enough to recall Tiananmen Square? Only at the end, when it was collapsing and could no longer suppress descent, was descent allowed in the USSR! Look at what is now going on in North Africa, and the Middle East. How effectively has reasoned non-violence worked in Sub-Saharan Africa, over the last 50 years.
The British had the capacity to take Gandhi out, while making it look like a heart attack. Do you think the nut jobs in Qom Iran would be so restrained? Of course they have not been and will not be!
“With so much rhetoric from Washington nowadays about promoting democracy and helping moderate dissidents, how can refusing to do the bare minimum in the cyberspace competition be justified?”
You just answered your own question.