Guillaume Dominguez
For 42 days, Iranian women have taken to the streets at the risk of their lives to denounce the death in detention of Mahsa Amini, arrested and imprisoned for wearing the veil improperly. The religious are trying by all means to silence the protest. The slightest speech, the slightest contact with foreigners can lead to a heavy prison sentence.
Can Iran switch to revolution? It has been more than a month since the Iranian protests have continued, more than a month since Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, was arrested by morality police for breaching the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code which obliges women in particular to wear the veil. This uprising received the support of men, often students, to demand more freedom. Enough to shake the power which trembles on its base but remains supported by the army. Under these conditions, the religious brutally repress the slightest speech, the slightest interview with a foreign media.
The simple sending of an sms abroad can lead to a prison sentence
The simple sending of a message abroad evoking the protest movement or the sharing on social networks of video of the demonstration, can lead to a resident being accused of rebellion or treason in the eyes of Iranian law such as the explains sociologist Mahnaz Shirali. “Today, we know that the regime has become even more ferocious. And when it arrests young people who manage to overcome censorship and post outside the country, they face long years in prison with torture at inside prison”, she says at the microphone of Europe 1.
Iran reportedly uses spying techniques
These sanctions, enshrined in the Iranian Islamic penal code, can go as far as the death penalty. To track these attempts to communicate abroad, the power in place would have recourse to espionage techniques, according to the sociologist Fharad KhosroKavar: “It has software of Chinese and Russian origin which identifies the words. All you have to do is say a word, noted in their lexicon, for the recording to start.”
A censorship policy used by Iranian governments since the arrival of the Internet in the country fifteen years ago.