Iran uses cyberspace to get expats to vote

Gareth Smyth in Tehran, Financial Times:

The Iranian government has launched a website to encourage Iranians living in the US to vote in next week's presidential election. The site Election1384.com profiles the eight candidates for the June 17 poll, and lists 32 cities in America where voting centres will be set up. READ MORE

But US-allied exiles have called on the US government to close down any polling centres.

Three groups - including the Student Movement Coordinating Committee for Democracy in Iran- have written to president George W Bush and the FBI calling for "assistance in stopping this illegal activity" [by] "a diehard terrorist regime spread[ing] its anti-American brand of Islamic fundamentalism".

The US is a centre for many Iranian opposition groups, including those linked to the son of the former Shah, overthrown in 1979 by the Islamic Revolution. The SMCCDI claimed it was successful in closing down similar voting booths four years ago in Los Angeles, when Mohammad Khatami was re-elected president of Iran on a 66 per cent turnout.

Inside Iran, reformists and opposition figures are divided between those supporting the elections and others calling for a boycott.

Akbar Ganji, the dissident journalist facing re-arrest after a week's sick leave from prison, has urged Iranians to stay away from the polls.

But Ibrahim Yazdi, leader of the semi-legal Freedom Movement, this week called for voters to back Mostafa Moein, the main reformist candidate.

Fazlollah Salavati, a supporter of the Freedom Movement jailed under both the Shah and the Islamic Republic, told the FT that Iranians should vote to strengthen the democratic process.

"I love my country and I care about its fate," he said. "Since there is no desire for another revolution, we must reform what we have, rather than leave politics to opportunists and monopolists."

Mohammad Reza Khatami, Dr Moein's running mate, this week told an election rally in Isfahan: "We cannot sit idle and allow the legalisation of despotism - we must enter the arena and preserve the democratic components of the political system."

The meeting was reportedly attended by a senior representative of Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, Iran's most senior Shia Muslim scholar, who was under house arrest from 1999 until 2003.

On Wednesday, Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, the former police chief running as a conservative moderniser in the presidential election, told a Tehran news conference he favoured continuing the blocking of websites by ISPs at the behest of the state.

"Filtering is correct in principle, but it should not be taken too far," he said.