It needs to be read:
Abuse
of Freedom of Expression by Pretenders to It
Freedom of expression
is virtually nonexistent in Iran. According to Reporters Without Borders’ 2013 Press Freedom Index, Iran stands at the 174th
place – the 6th from the bottom – among the 179 countries assessed with
regard to freedom of expression or lack thereof. That is why The UN Refugee
Agency has dubbed Iran the “Middle East’s
biggest prison for journalists.”
In the absence
of freedom of expression in Iran, power has been concentrated in the hands of
the Islamic Republic and its functionaries who hold a strict monopoly on the
media. As such, they don’t allow others to freely express their opinions on
political, social, cultural, environmental, etc. issues and problems, which has
largely contributed to the creation of a monophonous and monolithic state in
Iran.
This in turn has
forced many Iranian writers, journalists, critics, dissidents, and… to seek
freedom of expression elsewhere, usually at a high price, in the face of many
adversities and even at risk of losing their lives. In
fact, it can be said that virtually all the Iranian public platforms that in
one way or another oppose or criticize the regime in Iran are based overseas,
especially in Europe and the United States.
Among these platforms,
the link-sharing websites, due to their giving the users more authority in
determining the content of the website – a rather “democratic” feature
obviously absent from the mainstream Iranian media, have been very popular. One
of the more successful websites in that trend has been Balatarin. According to its Wikipedia page, “Balatarin (Persian: بالاترین,
lit., highest) is a Persian language social and political link-sharing website
aimed primarily at Iranian audiences. Balatarin does not generate news in-house
but provides a hub where users can post links to webpages of their choice, vote
on their relevance or significance, and post comments.”
Though
established long before that, Balatarin came to light since the fraudulent
presidential elections of 2009 in Iran due to its independent citizen and
journalist users’ sharing the news of and the announcements for the
demonstrations against the election results. However, as time went by and as
the website gathered momentum and attracted lots of attention, Balatarin itself
began to demonstrate repressive tendencies. In waves of purges, well-known and
prestigious users (or rather, IDs) were first denied the ability to create the
so-called “hot-topic” strands and then their accounts were suspended by the
management, and the website in general took a more conservative turn with
respect to allowing for any kind of content opposing the Islamic Republic.
As such, these
days links with substantial content against or in criticism of the regime hardly
get a chance to become visible on the website, and the bulk of the content is
now inclined towards supporting a particular faction of the regime called “The
Reformists” who have long penetrated the media in the West by mass-migrating to
the Western countries. As a matter of fact, a great host of users have been
complaining about harsh censorship and slanted presentation of content in favor
of the so-called Reformists, even in breach of Balatarin’s own internal
regulations.
As a result, it
has been many times claimed that Balatarin, though receiving aid from organizations worldwide
that have a concern for freedom of expression and democracy, and also
benefitting from Google service in order to seemingly protect itself
from the cyber-attacks by the Islamic Republic, in effect toes the line of the
Islamic Republic (or at least a faction of it), the very political entity that
it became known for opposing in the first place.
Recently, an
old user and a well-known political activist, Abbas Khosravi Farsani, has claimed that Balatarin sells or in
whatever manner puts the users’ information at the disposal of the Islamic
Republic. He has claimed that it was in fact his own incognito activities in
Balatarin that led to his arrest by the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of
Intelligence a couple of years ago.
Khosravi, who
by that time was one of the top doctoral students in Western Philosophy at
University of Isfahan in Iran, used to be a prolific blogger and a political
activist who worked incognito, using fake but well-known IDs. He was later
forced to flee Iran as he was about to face a heavy sentence, and has since been
living abroad as a political refugee. He says that when the agents of the
Ministry raided his house, they even had his IP (Internet Protocol) with them,
and showed it to him on the spot.
As Balatarin
was the only website that – as a mandatory feature – had access to Khosravi’s
IP, and as some of the IDs that were then intimately in touch with him now appear
to have top moderating responsibilities with strong pro-regime tendencies in
Balatarin, Khosravi claims that he is certain it was Balatarin that sold his
information to the Intelligence Ministry, and that he sees this as his
inalienable right to bring charges against Balatarin at an impartial court of
justice in due time.
Whether
Khosravi’s claim is substantiated or not, this is only one among the many rather
well-documented charges brought against Balatarin in recent times that claim
this website works in the sphere of the Islamic Republic. These include “Balatarin Miracles: Are
the policy-makers for the defense of democracy in Washington aware of the dramatic
changes in the trends of Balatarin?”, “Censorship in Balatarin: this time omitting the hot
topic on the Persian section of Voice of America”, “Imam Yahyanejad and Omitting Seven Hot
Topics on the Persian Section of Voice of America”, “The ‘Where-Is-My-Link?’ Movement: a
real fiction”, “Populating Balatarin with +18 Links”, “Are the Pictures of Jenifer Lopez and Lindsay Lohan
More Important than the [Political] Analyses by Knodnevis?!”, “Where Art Thou, O Orwell?! Balatarin and 1984”, “A Fatwa to Forbid Balatarin”, “Balatarin and the Links
that Are Not ‘Hot’ Anymore”, and “A Proposal for Creating a Better
Link-Sharing Website than Balatarin”.
Nevertheless,
the Balatarin management, though in charge of a public platform benefitting
from humanitarian aid for propagating freedom of expression and democracy, has
never shown any hint of public responsibility as to publicly and officially answer
the charges brought against it. As a result, this piece has been penned in
order to issue a warning to all those who care for the freedom of expression anywhere
around the world and especially in Iran, and also to demonstrate that how public
resources meant for good intentions can be used in achieving dubious ends when there
is no informed and responsible supervision.
