Iran Pulls the Plug on the Internet While the Nation Goes through a Turmoil
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Sep 28, 2022
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internet-restriction-in-iran-after-the-protests
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Iran restricts nearly whole internet after the nationwide protests. People have been raising voice against the government after Islamic Republic morality police killed Mahsa Amini. Iran government decided to shut down internet to prevent the protests.
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Eda Guzelyol
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Internet Freedom
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Iran Restricts Nearly Whole Internet After The Protests - FastVPN
Iran officials are imposing restrictions on mobile networks and the internet, especially with platforms, such as WhatsApp and Instagram. The nation has been experiencing great unrest over the alleged police killing of Mahsa Amini in the form of protests.
People are facing nationwide outages, especially the ones using the leading mobile operator in Iran, MCI, and Rightel. There have been partial outages for mobile operators, such as Irancell.
Iran had previously restricted internet connection in the 2019 massacre when people had taken to the streets to protest against fuel price increase of as much as 300% within a night.
Why is the Protest Happening?
Amini, also called Jhina by her Kurdish, breathed her last on Friday while she was in Islamic Republic morality police’s custody after she had been detained by them for allegedly wearing an improper hijab. Since then, the people of Iran, especially women have been protesting and unrest has spread throughout the country. Many protestors have been killed on Wednesday as per the human rights organizations.
When the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Communication Ministry was asked for a comment, they didn’t respond. According to Wednesday’s Reuter’s report, the minister was misquoted by the local media as he only suggested that the government might restrict internet access.
Miaan Group human rights organization’s director of human rights and security, Amir Rashidi operates a resource center for helping the people of Iran deal with the internet restrictions. Rashidi and his team offer help to Iranians within the country with tech tools, training, and risk analysis guidance so that they are able to stay connected with each other if the government completely severs the internet.
Rashidi believes that the Iranian officials are presently following a pattern, firstly, they are shutting down the mobile data and it can be enough to shut down even in a specific neighborhood. In case the protest keeps growing, they will begin expanding the range and severity of the internet shut down. Eventually, they will shut down almost everything.
Even now, the choice to get around the internet service blackout might be limited.
What Services are Blocked in Iran?
People of the nation are being cut out from online services and apps. So, they are not able to get in touch with their loved ones.
NetBlock’s director, Alp Toker has told The Record that they have been tracking a sharp rise in internet restrictions since Friday as the unrest rose over Amini’s death. On Monday, there were internet blackouts in Kurdistan and a few parts of Tehran had also been disrupted. The place where her funeral was held experienced a complete internet blackout.
Iran has banned platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter for many years. Instagram has been a notable exception. But that is also gone. The website is disrupted across all prime network operators indicating filtering at the national gateway of Iran.
The country might have been able to get around typical bans of platforms through VPNs but the kind of disruption implemented on Wednesday has an effect on the connectivity. So, VPN cannot be of any use in this case.
But the growing protests show people are united and no matter what is the outcome, we might be seeing a new dawn in Iran.
