Freedom of thought and expression

Last updated:

April 21, 2025

Freedom of thought and expression

From the Ban on Showerheads to Internet Filtering / Fereshteh Goli

To understand the history of internet filtering in Iran, we need to go back to the early years following the victory of the February 1979 Revolution. As soon as the Islamic Republic was established, it declared many cultural topics—and generally anything that carried the scent of technology—either forbidden or subject to bizarre restrictions and censorship […]...

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Created By: Fereshteh Goli
January 20, 2025

Are Hashtags and Campaigns Tools for Change or Illusions of Participation?/ Mehrnaz Razaghi

Today, social media has become a key platform for activism, enabling everything from public support for political and social causes to the organization of protests. This digital space gained even more significance during the COVID-19 pandemic when people turned to digital media more than ever before. Now, every gathering or protest is not just a […]...

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Created By: Mehrnaz Razaghi
January 20, 2025

Can Civil Resistance Transform the Face of Governance in Iran?/ Majid Shia’ali

In recent years, our country has constantly been aflame. The widespread protests of December 2017, November 2019, the protests over the Ukrainian airplane tragedy, the Mahsa Movement, protests against the serial poisoning of schoolgirls, and the ongoing civil disobedience of Iranian women against mandatory hijab are just part of society’s resistance to the ruling regime. […]...

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Created By: Majid Shia’ali
December 21, 2024

Government Pressure on Journalists Regarding the Tabas Mine Tragedy/ Sina Yousefi

The tragic “Tabas Mine” incident, which involved an explosion or collapse in one of the coal mines in the region, claimed the lives of several workers and left many families mourning. This incident is one of those bitter events that once again highlights the fundamental problems in the field of workplace safety and the lack […]...

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Created By: Sina Yousefi
October 22, 2024

Unequal Education: A Threat to Democratization in Iran?/ Majid Shia’ali

The Iranian Parliament Research Center recently published a study indicating that nearly 55% of students ranked in the top 3,000 in the national university entrance exam come from the top two economic deciles. The study warns that access to higher education in Iran, both in terms of quantity and quality, is significantly unequal. One major […]...

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Created By: Majid Shia’ali
October 22, 2024

The government of “National Unity” and its promises / Majid Shia’ali

Today, a government has come to power in Iran that considers its slogan to be national unity; a slogan that more than two decades ago, the movement for freedom – as part of the opposition to the government inside Iran – demanded through its statements and has been brought up again in political discussions in […]...

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Created By: Majid Shia’ali
September 22, 2024

“Jenbesh-e Mahsa, Iranian Civil Resistance and the Role of Women / Majid Shia’ali”

The contemporary history of our country is filled with violent protests and nonviolent resistance for changing the political power structure; so much so that it could be considered the first civil resistance of the 20th century by Iranians. This is because the Constitutional Revolution of Iran in 1905-1906 is listed as the first nonviolent revolutionary […]...

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Created By: Majid Shia’ali
August 22, 2024

A Look at the Election Promises of Physicians Regarding “Filtering” and “Monitoring” / Hormoz Sharifian

The world has different policies, one of which is the world of “promises”. Nowadays, politicians in all forms of government – from democratic to semi-democratic and even authoritarian – are forced to make promises to the people and the people usually have no choice but to “vote” based on the promises they hear from the […]...

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Created By: Hormoz Sharifian
August 22, 2024

Violation of privacy, under the guise of protecting public security/ Soghra Rahimi

According to reports published on social media in the past weeks, security forces have displayed another form of violence against women by violating their privacy at metro stations and continuing the enforcement of compulsory hijab. According to these reports, passengers are confronted with officers who, without their consent, confiscate and search their mobile phones under […]...

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Created By: Soghra Rahimi
August 22, 2024

Division and dichotomy of sanctions or cooperation; in conversation with Mostafa Mehrayin/ Amir Aghaei

The fourteenth presidential election, regardless of its outcome, had another characteristic that sparked many debates and controversies in society. The low participation of people in both stages of the election and the boycott of it by the majority of the society, has been defined as the beginning of a new era of political action by […]...

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Created By: Amir Aghayi
July 22, 2024

The story of a painful day in journalism in Iran / Hormoz Sharifian

In Iran, the day of the journalist is marked by the name “Mahmoud Saremi”. On August 8, 1998, one of the journalists of the IRNA news agency, along with several employees of the Islamic Republic consulate, was killed by Taliban forces in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan. Since then, August 8 has been designated as […]...

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Created By: Hormoz Sharifian
July 22, 2024

The story of the sorrowful repentance and redemption in the 1960s/ Reza Alijani

According to the jurisprudential and legal laws governing the courts of the Islamic Republic, repentance of criminals can be effective in the severity of the sentence issued against them. Articles 114 to 119 of the Islamic Penal Code pertain to repentance and its methods of verification. It should be noted that most of these substances […]...

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Created By: Reza Alizadeh
July 22, 2024