AFP: Iranian authorities have blocked access within Iran to the official website of reformist former president turned key opposition figure Mohammad Khatami, an opposition website said on Tuesday.
TEHRAN (AFP) — Iranian authorities have blocked access within Iran to the official website of reformist former president turned key opposition figure Mohammad Khatami, an opposition website said on Tuesday.
Kaleme.com, the mouthpiece of main opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, said “governmental committee has ordered the filtering on Khatami.ir,” which carries news and comments of Iran’s former president.
Iranian authorities tightly control Internet access and the websites of opposition leaders such as Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, while news sites critical of the government have also long been blocked, opposition websites claim.
But many Internet users use proxies to reach banned websites which also include social networking site Facebook and the video-sharing site YouTube.
Scores of bloggers have been jailed on security charges, with the harshest punishment being meted out in September to prominent blogger Hossein Derakhshan, sentenced to over 19 years in prison, media reports say.
Derakhshan, a Canadian-Iranian credited with starting the blogging movement in Iran, has been convicted of collaborating with Iran’s “enemies,” propaganda against the regime and insulting Islamic sanctities.
