Iranian strife reveals influence of new media

2009-06-24

The Iranian government is addressing a large-scale political crisis prompted by the June 12th elections. Experts in the Maghreb point to the role of the internet in mobilising support for the opposition.

Jamel Arfaoui in Tunis, Sarah Touahri in Rabat, Fidet Mansour in Algiers and Mohamed Yahya Ould Abdel Wedoud in Nouakchott contributed to this report – 24/06/09

[Hadishd173/AFP/Getty Images] Iranian demonstrators used new technology to co-ordinate and chronicle events in the streets despite tight state control over the media.

Maghreb analysts reacting to the ongoing tensions between Iranian protesters and their government over the results of the June 12th presidential elections suggest that the political crisis may have implications beyond Iran's borders. Some see the violent clashes as a struggle between theocracy and democratisation in a new age of open and global media; others contrast the situation in Iran to that seen in Arab countries.

"We can understand from what's taking place in Iran right now that the laws of the Khomeini revolution of the 1970s are no longer suitable for governing the liberal generation of today's 'global village'," said Talib, a Mauritanian journalist. "This will inevitably lead to violence, destruction and loss of trust unless the opinions of these generations are taken into account by returning to democratic methods".

Kader Abderrahim, a researcher for the Institute of International and Strategic Relations in Morocco, said a battle has begun between religious rule and democracy. The theocracy established in 1979 now finds itself in the same situation as the Shah's feudal regime before it was overthrown. "This system is running out of puff," he said, "and if it doesn't want to come to the same end, then the only solution is dialogue."

Iranian leaders believed their society was truly closed, suggested Taj Eddine El Housseini, a Moroccan lecturer in international relations. Nevertheless, citizens used mobile telephones and the internet to reveal what is truly happening in Iran to the rest of the world. "There were many people hoping that the protests would end with the speech from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but they have just increased all the more," he said.

Omar Belhouchet, director of Algeria's El Watan newspaper, noted that something is changing in the Islamic republic: "Despite being considered a hermetically-sealed regime, the Iranian authorities have discovered, in the light of the presidential election... a new form of political challenge advanced this time by people from their entourage who until now declined to challenge them so openly."

Another Algerian newspaper, Le Temps, discussed the use of amateur video to break a local media blackout. The violence of the clashes was depicted, one journalist wrote, "in a video published online on Saturday, and seen by hundreds of thousands of Internet users, showing the bloodied face of a young woman, Neda, presented as a demonstrator shot dead".

Moez Zayoud, professor of media at the Tunisian University, said the recent election uncovered and exposed totalitarian regimes in the entire region. "Media coverage of the events in Iran showed that [these] regimes... are still unaware that tightened censorship on the modern technologies of information and communication will only lead to adverse results," he suggested.

"In the past, it was possible to besiege the few journalists who were moving against the prevailing current," Zayoud continued. "Today, it has become easy for ordinary people to take part in the production of media content."

In fact, he said, there are so many ways to disseminate information now that "it has become impossible for the eyes of censorship to reach everyone".

Zayoud concluded with a critique of the Iranian regime's response to the emerging crisis. "[T]he Iranian authorities became confused over the shaking of their image in the world, and their portrayal as election riggers and oppressors of freedom. The Iranian regime confronted that confusion with high tension… and its heightened measures of censorship on different media – especially electronic media – led to the circulation of a darker picture of conditions in Iran."

The professor said that Iran's premeditated closure of social networks and sites such as YouTube, Twitter, DailyMotion and Facebook was unacceptable to young people, "including those who didn't originally take part in the demonstrations... these websites have become an important part of their social lives, and it seems that the Iranian regime is still refusing to recognise these changes."

Bassam Bounenni, a Tunisian journalist for Aljazeera, contrasted the events in Iran with how certain Arab treat their own opposition the right to stage protests. "I want to ask a question: which Arab regime would allow a demonstration in which one million people take part?"

Bounenni condemned Iran's treatment of journalists, but suggested that matters might be worse in Arab countries. "I had a similar experience [during] the elections in Zimbabwe... in spite of vote rigging and a crackdown on journalists and citizens, [the] electoral process is light years ahead of the Arab electoral masquerades," he said.

The journalist said that some acts of violence against protesters were aired live by Iran's state-owned media, a fact he pointed to in comparing it to coverage of the recent Algerian presidential election. "The [Algerian] authorities refused to give media approval to foreign media that wanted to cover the event," he said. "This actually shows a great retraction on the part of Arab countries in the field of freedoms and human rights."

Tunisian rights activist Saida Guarrach asked about the difference between what the Iranian regime is doing and the behaviour of Maghreb rulers. "Unfortunately, this is a scene that has become familiar to us, and this is a fate which we fear whenever we want to move ahead towards the realization of the minimum requirements of citizenship: expression – through votes – of an opinion, position or choice that doesn't conform to that of people who cling to power indefinitely," she said.