HRANA News Agency – The Fourth Pillar Committee is an organization associated with the Human Rights Activists in Iran and is actively involved in fighting against the censorship and tightening the Internet security measures. This committee has recently reported the monitoring and cyber security activities of the intelligence organizations of the government of Iran as well-organized, serious threat against the Internet, in particular with respect to the sexual minorities activities in Iran.  The Fourth Pillar Committee has published a report about the cyber security activities of the intelligence organizations of the Iranian government to increase the public awareness and experience in dealing with these activities which could be essential for the development of human rights activities and freedom of speech in Iran. The main features of these cyber security activities and their operations and coordination are described below.

The movement for the rights of sexual minorities has remarkably improved over the recent years in Iran. This movement has currently started to publicize their legal demands, which is a dramatic improvement in comparison with a few years ago. In parallel with increasing the activities of this movement, the destructive attacks against the sexual rights activists have been expanded. After the recent sexual minorities parade in Istanbul, in which a number of Iranian sexual minorities rights activists also participated, the security agencies in Iran felt intimidated particularly because this parade was carried out in a Muslim country close to Iran. Therefore, the security and intelligence agencies of the Iranian government started a widespread campaign against the sexual rights activists using the social media. This malicious campaign has been more visible in the recent weeks, probably because of the broad reflection of some of the Sexual Minorities activities in the World Day against Homo-Phobia and Trans-Phobia (17 May). Although, these cyber security campaign are currently focused on a small number of sexual minorities organizations, but it may target the integrity of the young and moving LG BT organization (lesbian or gay female, gay or gay men, bi or bisexual or  transsexuals) in long term. Continue reading “Special Report on Increasing the Cyber-Security Monitoring of the Sexual Minorities Movement in Iran”