Iran removes block on Telegram
TEHRAN: Iran has lifted restrictions imposed during recent protests on the country’s most popular social media app Telegram. AFP journalists were able to access the service on Sunday and officials confirmed it has been restored. “The information concerning the end of filtering on Telegram is correct,” a spokesman for the telecoms ministry told AFP.
Telegram, which counts some 25 million users in Iran, was blocked on mobile phones during the five days of unrest that hit dozens of cities over the New Year. The semi-official ISNA news agency said the restrictions on Telegram had been “entirely lifted under orders of (President Hassan Rouhani).” The government accused “counter-revolutionaries” and foreign groups of inciting violence via social media during the unrest, and also temporarily cut mobile access to photo sharing app Instagram. They also blocked some VPN privacy apps, which are commonly used to get around longstanding bans on sites such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.
Rouhani said during the unrest that the restrictions were necessary, but should not be “indefinite”. He accused conservative opponents of using the protests to impose widespread censorship. “You want to take the opportunity to shut down this social media for eternity. You might sleep well, but 40 million people had problems... 100,000 people lost their jobs,” Rouhani said on January 9, referring to complaints that many businesses were hit by the Telegram shutdown.
The head of the country’s cybercrime committee, Abdolsamad Khoramabadi, had earlier criticised the government for not blocking Telegram sooner, and said officials should be “punished” if it was found they deliberately failed to act against online “trouble-makers and enemies”. Conservatives have also called for the development of local apps to replace Instagram and Telegram. Rouhani’s support for temporary restrictions still represented something of a reversal for a president who has vowed to end all online censorship. Just three weeks before the unrest, on December 19, Rouhani told the country’s first conference on civil liberties: “We will not seek to filter social media. Our telecoms minister promises the people he will never touch the filtering button.” Indonesian jailed for FB post
In other news, an Indonesian teenager was sentenced yesterday to 18 months in prison for “insulting” President Joko Widodo on Facebook. The 18-year-old high school student from Medan on the island of Sumatra, identified by the initials MFB, was found guilty of violating the country’s internet law by making defamatory and slanderous comments online. Judges also ordered him to pay 10 million rupiah ($700) in fines.
“If the fines are not paid, the jail term is extended by one month,” the presiding judge told the Medan court. The teenager accepted the verdict and did not file an appeal. MFB was arrested in August last year after he posted numerous inflammatory messages and memes against Widodo and police chief Tito Karnavian using fake accounts. In July, he made a post challenging the police to arrest him. And they did, a month later. The government of Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim majority country, has received criticism following a string of arrests of people accused of insulting the president, making slanderous comments and posting fake information on social media.
Democracy and rights activisits have branded the internet law draconian and a threat to free speech. Last week a court in Jambi province, also on Sumatra, sentenced a local politician to one year in jail after he made a Facebook post considered to be insulting Islam. The judges found him guilty of violating the law and “inciting hatred”. In November last year, a man was charged for posting on Instagram images of Widodo’s wife, Iriana, with texts considered offensive to the first lady.