Iran blocks access to YouTube, as critic decries censorship

Popular site joins clerics' blacklist

December 06, 2006|Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press

TEHRAN -- Iran has blocked access to the popular video-sharing website YouTube.com, and a media rights group warned yesterday that Internet censorship in the Islamic state is on the rise.

Those who tried to call up YouTube yesterday were met with the message, "On the basis of the Islamic Republic of Iran laws, access to this Web site is not authorized." That message appears on numerous opposition and pornographic websites the government blocks.

It was not known how long the site had been on Iran's blacklist. The media group Reporters Without Borders said YouTube had been blocked for the past five days.

Iran's Shi'ite cleric-run government regularly blocks opposition websites, including blogs, and the number of sites that bring up the "unauthorized" message has been increasing over the past year. Western news sites, however, are generally available.

Videos from the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq and other Iranian opposition groups have been posted on YouTube.com, along with videos posted by individual Iranians critical of the regime. The site also has Iranian pop music videos, which ruling clerics frown on.

In its statement yesterday, Reporters Without Borders warned that "censorship is now the rule rather than the exception" in Iran.

"The government is trying to create a digital border to stop culture and news coming from abroad -- a vision of the Net which is worrying for the country's future," it said.