Month: September 2022

Iranian football star Sardar Azmoun speaks out about the death of Mahsa Amini

Iranian professional football star Sardar Azmoun speaks out about the death of Mahsa Amini (and many others like her) and the protests that are sweeping Iran. He says he is willing to sacrifice his place on the national football team, if it means not hurting a strand of an Iranian woman’s hair.

Please support the women, men, young people, and children of Iran who are right now risking their lives protesting the oppressive machinery of the regime. The internet in Iran has been effectively cut. Iran is in darkness. This is a tool of the machinery of oppression. It is hard for Iranians to get their story out. It is very dangerous with police shooting protesters, who are mostly unarmed.
Governments can massacre their people more easily in internet darkness. In the last protests in Iran in 2017-2020, the Iranian government killed 1500 people.

The Iranian government will use psychological tactics to make you believe that protesters are guided by foreigners or are separatists, but it is not true. Most protesters are young students, fed up with the regime. Sewing division is just a way for the regime to divide and conquer the people. To remain in power without giving any concessions or adequate human rights to the people of Iran. This is not about Islam. This is about women’s rights which are the same as human rights. It is about more than hijab (veiling).
Many women’s rights are violated in Iran on a daily basis. Marital rape is legal. Women can be put to death for adultery. Just to name a few major violations.

When any woman is oppressed, all women are oppressed. We need to support the women of Iran by doing whatever we can to help, even if it is just keeping this topic in the the news by talking about it and using hashtags. Because trending hashtags on Twitter is one way of how journalists decide what to run their stories on. Even if it is just helping to provide internet by installing a Tor Snowflake on your computer web browser. Even if it is just telling news agencies and politicians this story is important.

Share their story, keep it in the news. Don’t allow genocide to happen under your nose. Be on the right side of history.

How to help others get around internet censorship

Photo by Jill Wellington on Pexels.com

Oppressive regimes around the world use internet shutdowns or censorship to stop their people getting online and sharing information. This is a way for states to:

  1. Try to prevent people communicating protest gathering locations.
  2. Slowdown or prevent video and photos of atrocities being released to the wider world.
  3. Prevent victims from getting their stories out or communicating with international media.

You can help the people of Iran and other places where internet has been suppressed with the simple act of installing a Tor Snowflake to your Firefox or Chrome web browser. Best part is it’s super easy!

How do I do it?
Got to https://snowflake.torproject.org/ and click on the link to install the Tor Snowflake extension to your web browser.

Once it is installed a purple snowflake will appear in your address bar. Make sure it is toggled ‘ON’.
When the snowflake turns green in colour, that means someone is using your snowflake to connect to the internet.

Well done! Sharing is caring.

To read more about the Tor project visit: https://www.torproject.org/about/history/