Geneva (AsiaNews) – The Iranian government was accused of blocking access to weblog coverage of the UN meeting in Geneva. Yesterday many of the delegates attending the UN sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) received complaints from concerned web publishers.

Iranian weblog writers (so called "bloggers, non-corporate internet publishers of chronicles and personal commentary) discovered this week that their news briefs on the summit's events did not reach readers in Tehran. They received numerous emails informing them that the Google search engine couldn't locate their web sites.

One Iranian blogger, Hossein Derakhshan, said he hoped the 12,000 WSIS representatives could influence his country's delegates to end net-censorship, just like "the EU pressure once forced Iran to suspend (its) stoning law".

Earlier this year the Iranian government began censuring politically-oriented web content by ordering ISPs (internet service providers) to block thousands of sites threatening or contradicting the regime's fundamentalist positions. It is reported that over 10,000 sites have been blocked in Iran so far. 

This morning in a speech given at the WSIS summit, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami denied the accusations and reports. He insisted that Iran's Ministry for Information Technology "blocks access (only) to 240 'pornographic and immoral' sites" and that "all political sites are free…, even those openly opposed to Iranian government".  (MS)

• iran
• united
• nations
• internet
• human
• rights
• freedom
• information