Interviews with Nima Rashedan

I think first of all, let’s not forget, this is a very inefficient and bankrupt government – it’s a very corrupt government. So, if they make a contract with a computer company for making anti-information or a filtering software, probably 80 percent of this contract is being paid for bribes, so that end-user product coming from this company is not efficient at all. And I think the people’s will, genuine will, that is efficient – the people who are really doing these small tricks. I´m working, actually, in cyber-security for a D.C.-based Iranian e-learning company, Tavaana; and there, we are teaching the Iranian public and people how to get over Internet filtering.

And sometimes, by my student – I see bright people, somebody who is, I don’t know, 16-years-old, actually from inside Iran – he’s teaching me that by pressing this and this and this and changing some port address, we can have a no filter Internet. You see, this is a government who has a multi-million dollar budget to limit access of young people to the Internet. And there are a couple of young people who have a very strong, genuine will. And I think I don’t need any argument to argue who is going to win this battle because at one part, you have somebody who stands against history; and the other part, you have the generation who wants to know more.

And what I’m very pleased with, and what I’m very happy with, is that from inside the house of the supreme leader, from inside the house of the most influential guard commanders, from inside the house of interrogators, judges, some people who are very much inside the security elements of the system: their daughters, their wife, their young people, their grandchildren – they are trying to use our anti-filtering software to connect to the Internet.

And that’s very promising; that shows a very good future for Iran, because then you see City of Qom, which is the Vatican for Islamic Shia, which is the governing theology in Iran; and you see the number of the tries – the number of the approaches – to get over the filtering and come to the free information, it is number one for City of Qom.

Nima Rashedan was among the first Iranian cyber-activists. Born in Tehran in 1974, his father was a leftist opponent of the government headed by the Shah, so the family was forced into exile in the United States but returned to Iran after the 1979 revolution.

Upon his return, Rashedan became a member of student organizations and worked as a journalist, becoming one of the first writers to publish articles in Farsi on the Internet. In the late 1990s, after the election of President Khatami, he began writing pro-democracy articles.

In 1998, Rashedan was arrested and served time in prison, including a month in solitary confinement. After his release, Rashedan immigrated to Switzerland. He now lives in the Czech Republic and continues his work as a cyber-journalist and advocate. A frequent focus of his work is the similarity between the methods and objectives of the current Iranian regime and those of the former Soviet Union.