Uncertainty in blogging in Iran
Neil MacFarquhar reports in the New York Times on bloggers in Iran. His report offers a glimpse of what it's like to live in a system where rule of law is not a given.Iranian Blogosphere Tests Government’s Limits
"Troll through the Iranian blogosphere [click on the map above] and you can find all manner of unexpectedly harsh critiques denouncing the government of the Islamic Republic, from reformists who revile it as well as conservatives who support it..."What gets filtered out is not entirely predictable either. Even some religious topics are deemed unacceptable. The government blocked the site of a blogger advocating the Shiite Muslim custom of temporary marriage...
"Over all, a new study by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School shows that Iran’s blogosphere mirrors the erratic, fickle and often startling qualities of life in the Islamic republic itself. The rules of what is permissible fluctuate with maddening imprecision, so people test the limits...
"In 2004, according to Human Rights Watch, 21 bloggers or people who worked at Internet news sites critical of the government were arrested, and some of them were tortured. Periodic arrests since then have ended with jail terms...
"The researchers’ general conclusion was that, 'despite periodic persecution,' many Iranians are able to use blogs to express 'viewpoints challenging the ruling ideology of the Islamic Republic.'...
"The study found that the next largest group of bloggers, hundreds of them, concentrated on romantic poetry. So many blogging bards might be uncommon in many other countries, but in Iran it is simply a reflection of a culture that so reveres poetry, where many children grow up dreaming of becoming great poets in the way many young Americans dream of a future in sports..."
See also: Mapping Iran's Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere
Labels: Iran, political culture, rule-of-law
posted by Ken Wedding @ 8:21 AM
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