LATEST: Culture Minister Promises “Adjusted and Updated” Regulations on Internet — But Is It Just Talk?

Amid confusion over the fate of five kidnapped Iranian border guards (pictured), Tehran is pressing Pakistan over security on their border.

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said, as he met the Speaker of the Pakistani Balouchistan Provincial Assembly in Tehran, “We expect the Pakistani government to prevent the illegal crossings at the two countries’ shared borders….The Islamic Republic of Iran is committed to defend and protect its borders seriously and will not allow infiltration of anyone from Pakistan’s Balouchistan province to Iran at all.”

The Sunni insurgency Jaish ul-Adl, which has carried out a series of attacks on Iranian forces since last summer, abducted the guards on February 6 in Sistan Baluchestan Province in southeastern Iran. Iranian officials said the men were subsequently taken across the border into Pakistan.

On Saturday, the deputy head of Iran’s armed forces said the men had been freed, only for the claim to be retracted later in the day. slamabad said that while Pakistani forces had freed 11 foreign hostages — eight of them Iranian — the border guards were not among those rescued.

Jaish ul-Adl also denied that any guards had been freed. The insurgency is asking for the release from Iranian prisons of 300 detainees, including 50 of its members and 50 women, in exchange for the men.

On Sunday, Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani chided the visiting Pakistan legislator over the “tensions in…relations” because of the border incidents. The Vice-Speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Mohammad Hassan Aboutorabi-Fard, also at the meeting, added, “The Pakistani officials are necessitated to prevent the attempts made by outlaws and terrorist groups in the border regions with Iran in a bid to avoid occurrence of similar bitter incidents in the future.”


Culture Minister Promises “Adjusted and Updated” Regulations on Internet — But Is It Just Talk?

Culture Minister Ali Jannati has again said that Internet regulations will be “adjusted and updated”, asserting that Iran
cannot maintain bans on outlets like Facebook forever.

“Four million Iranians are on Facebook, and we have restricted it,” Jannati said. “We cannot restrict the advance of [such technology] under the pretext of protecting Islamic values.”

Jannati made similar statements in an interview with Al Jazeera in January, but the Government has been silent in the face of recent measures against the press, including the suspension of the daily Aseman. There is also no sign of an easing of filtering of the Internet, or of a lifting of the ban on direct access to Facebook and Twitter, which have to be reached via Virtual Private Networks.

The Culture Minister insisted, “The six ministers who are members of the (filtering) committee have
clearly stated that we cannot continue to isolate ourselves from the world.”

However, in a sign of likely Government caution, Jannati added, “This is one of those issues whose solution requires time. And it will be resolved in time.”

He said media restriction are similar to measures after the 1979 Islamic Revolution such as bans on bans on fax machines and video tapes and players: “If we look back, we see many of the actions we took after the revolution
were ridiculous.