Contributed by Representative of Iranian Journalists
22 February 2005 - Geneva – WSIS Prepcom 2



Ladies and Gentlemen;

We believe that media and the key role of the media as a tool for ICT development is
obvious and not deniable.
I would prefer to draw your attention to some of obstacles which media would
encounter in countries under the sanction.

We have been observed recently that a well-known hosting provider has blocked the
servers of popular Iranian News Agency which has thousands of viewers each day.
Furthermore we got some more reports that the hosting provider does not feel any
responsibility to respond to the enquiries and they repeat again and again that the
case is not negotiable.
It made us keen to investigate more and finally we found a general answer to that.
The fact is the News Agency functions in a country which is on the Sanction list of
United States. As you may know, there are several countries in the US sanction list
and USA policy is to isolate the countries on the list through th!
e pressure of the embargos on those countries.
From other side, you may find some news that USA claims that governments of
sanctioned countries are trying to filter -desirable websites and USA is investing
thousands of dollars to develop Anonymizers[1] to let people jump over filtering
applications and watch the blocked websites.

When you see US embargos on exchange of Information material within sanctioned
countries and then you see that they are granting huge resources to help freedom of
expression in the same countries, you feel a clear contradiction within their
policy.

When you see that a hosting provider in USA, blocks database of a news agency, when
you see they are trying to perform embargo on exchange of Information material or
Internet connectivity, how can we talk about freedom of expression or access for
all, with referring to WSIS declaration of principles endorsed by all countries in
Geneva phase.

We would like to express that we dislike any efforts leading to blockage, any
efforts leading to filter special geographical end-users and any efforts to have
embargo[2] in place against any country regarding the Information Society issue.

We think that countries should find better ways of expressing themselves and
achieving their political goals, other than cutting access to information material
or running embargo against countries related to information material.

We strongly support media activities and exchange of information over the web in all
countries and we strongly encourage all governments to respect WSIS declaration of
principles and avoid unilateralism in this field. We suppose that all nations would
understand that Information Society can not tolerate any unilateralism. We
appreciate unity of media to battle against unilateralism and embargos regarding
information society.

Thank you for your attention to our contribution.

Supports, Comments and Enquiries to:
info@itiran.com / shemirani@iran.info
Phone: +98 912 199 4911
Fax: +98 21 873 3022

[1] People use anonymizers for two reasons: to protect their privacy and/or to
bypass blocking applications that would prevent access to Web sites or parts of
sites that they want to visit.

[2] Guidelinse and information for Ir!
an , US Sanction Program, More info:
http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/sanctions/sanctguide-iran.shtml