TEHERAN (dpa-AFX) – Almost two weeks before the presidential election in Iran, the hardliners in parliament have called for even more internet censorship in the country. 170 of the 290 MPs are preparing a corresponding bill, which Parliament should vote on soon, said MP Resa Taghipur on Sunday. According to the draft, all short message services will be blocked if companies fail to comply with Iranian laws. In addition, all Iranian Internet users are to be identified and the spread of data tunnels for access to prohibited sites are to be punished, the MP said in an interview with the Tasnim news agency.
According to the news portal Khabar-Online, the interview was taken offline some time later. At that time, however, the report had already been published by various media. Why Tasnim deleted the interview is still unclear. The MP Taghipur is also the election advisor to the presidential candidate Ebrahim Raeissi. Journalists working in Iran assume that Taghipur only realized after the interview that an interview about internet censorship would not be beneficial for his boss twelve days before the election.
Thousands of Internet sites have already been blocked in Iran, including the popular Twitter and Facebook networks. With the new law, Instagram and WhatsApp could also get on the prohibited list. The two are not only used privately by millions, but also for business and even medical purposes. Telephone calls in the country are also increasingly being made via WhatsApp.
The new Internet bill will probably only be on the agenda after the presidential election on June 18. Before that, it would also be problematic for the seven presidential candidates, who are all active on Twitter despite the official ban – including the arch-conservative top favorite Raeissi. The clergy and the other candidates have far better access to the voters on Twitter than via the state media, which are barely noticed by young people in particular.
According to a recent study, more than half of the 84 million Iranians are members of at least one of the banned social networks. So far, the Iranians have not cared about the Internet bans, because they used data tunnels to gain access to all filtered sites. But if these should also fail, not only they, but the whole country would have a communication problem./str/fmb/DP/he
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