The BBC said today that the satellites it uses to broadcast in Persian were being jammed from Iran, disrupting its reports on the hotly-disputed presidential election. The corporation said television and radio services had been affected from 1245 UTC Friday onwards by “heavy electronic jamming” which had become “progressively worse”. Satellite technicians had traced the interference to Iran, it said.
The satellites its uses in the Middle East to broadcast BBC Persian television to Iran were being affected, meaning that audiences in Iran, the Middle East and Europe would likely experience disruption. BBC Arabic television and other language services had also experienced transmission problems, the corporation said.
“Any attempt to block BBC Persian television is wrong and against international treaties on satellite communication. Whoever is attempting the blocking should stop it now,” said BBC World Service director Peter Horrocks. “It seems to be part of a pattern of behaviour by the Iranian authorities to limit the reporting of the aftermath of the disputed election.
“In Tehran, (BBC world affairs editor) John Simpson and his cameraman were briefly arrested after they had filmed material for a piece,” he added. Iranian authorities today shut down the office of Arab news channel Al-Arabiya in Tehran for a week in the wake of the disputed election win by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the channel said.
(Source: AFP)
Reporters Without Borders adds: The blocking of access to foreign news media has been stepped up. In addition to the blocking of the BBC’s website, the Farsi-language satellite broadcasts of the VOA and BBC – which are very popular in Iran – have been partially jammed. The Internet is now very slow, like the mobile phone network. YouTube and Facebook are hard to access and pro-reform sites such as Khordadeno, AftabNews and Ghalamesabz are completely inaccessible.
Andy Sennitt says: Two of the three sites mentioned above gave the message “bandwidth limit exceeded” when I checked at 1550 UTC, suggesting that DOS attacks may have been carried out.
on Jun 14th, 2009 at 15:40
Jim Cutler pointed out to me that the most interesting stuff is on Twitter from Iran, but a good chunk of it is from the UK and other parts of Europe.
Go to twitter and do a search.
on Jun 14th, 2009 at 21:21
Also journalist from Holland and Belgium has been kicked out of the country.
The re elected president makes it clear that is al a big fraud.
on Jun 15th, 2009 at 09:22
According to German radio news, BBC Persian is available again.
on Jun 15th, 2009 at 15:41
After 9/11 the major US news sites were down but I don’t think too many people suspected a foul play… BTW, AftabNews is already up and running.
During last century the US/UK special services helped staging a few major coups and a revolution in Iran. I guess we are witnessing just one more attempt. The revolution model was employed recently in Serbia and Ukraine with some mixed results. Clearly, Iranian authorities are not going to let that happen in their country.
on Jun 15th, 2009 at 16:57
No reporters were being lilmited or kicked out of the country 9/11
The news sites went down because of capacity problems.
on Jun 15th, 2009 at 17:15
Ruud, that’s my point: some of the Iranian news sites might be down due to a capacity problems, not because of DDos attacks. BTW, after 9/11 Al-Jazeera has had lots of trouble reporting both in the US and on the US-occupied territories. And that happened in one of the most democratic countries of the world! What can you expect from Iran where democratic process is a relatively new phenomenon.
The problem with elections in younger democracies is that the vocal minority is often having a hard time accepting the results of the majority vote. That’s what we see happeing in Iran. Very active foreign interferece doesn’t help, either. Let’s hope that the passions will settle down soon.
on Jun 15th, 2009 at 19:26
I am watching BBC Persian on the Hot Bird 11116 MHz. At this moment (19.20 UTC) the signal strengh verries verry much. It looks like my satellite dish is not aligned properly to the satellite although the reception of other stations on the Hot Bird is good. On the tv picture there are a lot of \’blocks\’. Every four of five seconds the audio signal disappears, and a few seconds later it appears again. It seam the Islamic republic shows it\’s real face to the world.
on Jun 15th, 2009 at 20:24
On YouTube you can find a video I made of reception of BBC Persion on the Hotbird.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1b_4GMh_hU