Many monarchs or heads of state have a hard time dealing with criticism. Some manage to ignore it, others ensure that journalists employ self-censorship, but still others have decided to crack down on criticism, often using the charge of lese majeste. However, those seeking to silence criticism are finding themselves overwhelmed in the vast realm of communications created by today's Internet.

Lese Majeste

Lese majeste differs from outright censorship in that it is often presented as libel, or as a personal offense against a head of State, rather than as a pure free speech issue. It is often used to silence those who express an inconvenient truth. Regular citizens as well as reporters can be prosecuted for this crime. To escape the stigma of censorship, some governments will prefer to prosecute reporters under lese majeste rather than under press laws.

The crime of lese majeste exists also in Spain, Jordan, Nepal, and the Netherlands but convictions are very rare. However, in 2007, two cartoonists with the Spanish magazine El Jueves were each fined 3,000 Euros for publishing a cartoon of the Prince of Asturias and his wife engaging in sexual intercourse. In the cartoon, the prince said: "Do you realize, if you get pregnant this will be the closest thing I've done to work in my whole life." The comment referenced an announcement made by the government that it would pay Spanish couples 2,500 Euros for each new addition to the family.

A Round-Up of Repression

All around the world, kings, princes, and despots are falling back on old laws mandating respect for their office to stifle online dissent.

The clash between the authorities' old habits and the new possibilities offered online was perfectly illustrated in Morocco in February 2008, during a widely publicized case involving Facebook. A Moroccan man, Fouad Mourtada, was arrested for pretending to be the brother of the king on the social networking site Facebook and was sentenced to three years in jail. He had insisted the fake profile was just a joke, and was released shortly after the incident when the king pardoned him. The BBC's James Copnall in Rabat said the case shows that the royal family remains very much a taboo subject in Morocco.

The same year, Moroccan blogger Mohammed Erraji was arrested for insulting the king in an article on the news website Hespress. He was sentenced to two years in prison and fined 5,000 dirhams (US $500) at the preliminary trial after being found guilty of "disrespect for the king." The Moroccan blogosphere, lively as ever, rallied around Erraji. An appeals court eventually rescinded his conviction, citing procedural irregularities.

Morocco's north African neighbor, Tunisia, whose press freedom record is much worse, has shown little tolerance to criticism of the authoritarian leader President Ben Ali. Lawyer and human rights activist Mohamed Abbou was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in 2005 after being accused of posting an article on the Tunisnews website comparing the torture of political prisoners in Tunisia to that perpetrated by U.S. soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Observers at his trial suspected the severity of the sentence was actually linked to a different article he had posted online a few days before his arrest, in which he criticized an invitation by President Ben Ali to Israeli leader Ariel Sharon to attend a UN summit in Tunis. In that article, Abbou also commented ironically on the alleged corruption within the president's family. He was released in July 2007 after completing two-thirds of his sentence.

In Egypt, Adel Kareem Nabil Suleiman, better known by the pen name Kareem Amer, was arrested in November 2006 for articles published on his blog. Amer was known for criticizing President Mubarak's government and top members of the country's religious establishment. The blogger was sentenced in February 2007, to three years in prison for "inciting hatred of Islam" and one year for "insulting" the Egyptian president. He is still being held despite a huge international campaign to obtain his release.

Iranian President Ahmadinejad seems to have taken personal offense to criticism regarding his guard dogs. In 2007, Iranian officials arrested editor Reza Valizadeh, 31, over an article on the website Baznegar. Posted 10 days earlier and headlined Ahmadinejad's Four Dogs, it detailed the exorbitant price (US $600,000) paid to obtain four guard dogs to protect the president's office. The story, which was one of the first articles on the subject, was later picked up by the British newspaper The Guardian. Validazeh was released a few days later after his family managed to raise a 50,000 Euro bail by mortgaging their property.

Hoping for Change

There are many examples all over the world of lese majeste-style laws in action and countless Internet users have been arrested by repressive regimes that do not wish to admit to censoring anything that is considered critical, or too personal, about their rulers. These governments have either simply extended the same methods used to censor the mainstream media to the Internet or they have singled out a few bold bloggers to send a warning to other would-be Internet critics.

Coming back to Thailand, this monarchy does not engage in wide sweeping, systematic censorship to nearly the same level as some other nations, but it has still pursued the implementation of the lese majeste law to unprecedented heights. The new government that took the reins of power in December 2008 is eager to show its support for the monarchy, making it a priority to control Internet dialogue in the name of lese majeste.

In one month alone, almost 4,000 websites were blocked because of "damaging content to the monarchy." More than half-a-dozen dissidents and writers currently have lese majeste charges pending against them. And the country's new minister of information decided to spend about $2 million to set up an Internet filtering system, pushing the paranoia even further.

Reporters Without Borders has asked the king, who said in 2005 he was "not above criticism," to launch a reform of lese majeste crime laws. If he does not stop the precedent being created, the new government's zeal could transform Thailand into another Internet Enemy. This would be disappointing for a country that has in many ways been a model for press freedom in Southeast Asia. Let's hope the king will be more offended by the abuses made by the government in his name than by what his critics are actually saying.

Whether it's in Thailand or any other country where the crime of lese majeste exists, this charge should be reformed to prevent it from being used as a way to silence critics. It's also up to the heads of state involved to show leniency and grant pardons to those who only expressed their opinions. The media's duty to hold those in power accountable does not disappear just because a head of state invokes lese majeste.

Lucie Morillon is the Washington, DC, director of Reporters Without Borders, an international press freedom organization. She covers press freedom issues in the U.S. and abroad and is a spokesperson for the group. She also handles advocacy work with Congress and has appeared on CNN, ABC and has been quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other publications. Reporters Without Borders strives to obtain the release of jailed journalists and cyber-dissidents and supports an independent media and the free flow of information online. Morillon is the free-speech correspondent for MediaShift.

Blogger Dieu Cay ("the Peasant Water Pipe") -- or Nguyen Van Haias in real life -- is learning this the hard way. The 56-year-old man is serving a 30-month jail sentence on a trumped-up charge of tax fraud, a poor excuse for the government to try to silence a dissident whose only crime was to exercise his right to free speech online.

Dieu Cay is the founder of a group of bloggers known as the Union of Independent Journalists. Last year, he helped found another group of bloggers called the Free Vietnamese Journalists Club to focus mainly on two subjects -- corruption and human rights. One of the country's leading activists, he received recognition last October by the U.S.-based Vietnam Human Rights Network for his commitment to free expression.

Cay was arrested on April 19 in Ho Chi Minh City, before being formally charged with tax fraud a few days later. Many human rights groups have condemned his conviction; Reporters Without Borders deemed it completely unfair and unfounded.

A Show Trial

Cay was arrested a few days before the Olympic torch passed through Ho Chi Minh City, an event the Vietnamese government was determined would go through without protests. A government website reported that Prime Minister Nguyn Tan Dung called for "absolute security" on April 20 during the torch relay and warned against "hostile forces" that might be tempted to try to disrupt it.

Authorities dubiously claimed that Cay had not paid any taxes on his private residence for over 10 years. In fact, under an arrangement allowed by the law, he rented the premises from Hanoi Eyewear Co., which in turn assumed all responsibility for paying taxes.

One of the blogger's lawyers told Reporters Without Borders he regarded the sentence as overly severe, especially since he demonstrated during the trial that police had failed to respect standard procedure:

Dieu Cay was arrested before the authorities had even established the monetary value of the alleged fraud. In this kind of case, the person accused of fraud is first asked to pay the fine. He is only arrested if he cannot produce the money. But Dieu Cay was never asked to pay. I questioned the role of the police in court. The judge reprimanded me for criticizing the authorities. This conviction is a disgrace.

The lawyer added that the trial was a "grotesque performance" where the sentence was decided in advance and court spectators were simply "extras" brought in to give the appearance of legitimacy. Cay's conviction was upheld by an appellate court on December 4 despite new evidence produced by the defense showing that police had prevented Cay's ex-wife from paying the taxes in February. Cay's property has since been seized and his family subjected to increased police harassment.

According to his son, Dieu Cay had been under close police surveillance since taking part in demonstrations in Ho Chi Minh City earlier this year against China's disputed claim to sovereignty over the Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea. Cay had also been blogging about China's controversial hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics and the relationship between China and Tibet.

Cay's son confided in a foreign journalist, who asked not to be identified: "You know, there are four kinds of people in Vietnam: those who know nothing and say nothing, those who do know and yet say nothing, those who know too much and are afraid to talk, and those who know, who speak out, and who pay the price."

Free Speech in Decline in Vietnam

Human Rights Watch noted that Dieu Cay's closed-door trial last September was followed by a new round of arrests of democracy activists, "in a thinly veiled effort by the government to silence independent bloggers, journalists and human rights defenders in Vietnam."

In theory, the Vietnamese constitution protects free expression but the reality is very different -- the ruling Communist Party tolerates no criticism. Vietnam has one of the world's most repressive regimes, and, in the past 10 years, state control over the media has slowly expanded to include online activities. Reporters Without Borders now lists Vietnam as one of the 13 countries deemed enemies of the Internet. Vietnam is currently detaining nine cyber-dissidents.

In 2007, Vietnam became the 150th member of the World Trade Organization. While the country tried to present itself as a bastion of free speech during the membership selection process, its behavior has changed dramatically since it was admitted. According to a report published two years ago by the OpenNet Initiative, "Vietnam is actively censoring the Internet, focusing its filtering on sites considered threatening to its one-party system."

The report compares Vietnam to China's multi-layered approach to controlling the Internet:

Vietnam applies technical controls, the law, and education to restrict its citizens' access to and use of information. Vietnam is carrying out this filtering with a notable lack of transparency -- while Vietnam claims its blocking efforts are aimed at safeguarding the country against obscene or sexually explicit content, most of its filtering efforts are aimed at blocking sites with politically or religiously sensitive material that could undermine Vietnam's one-party system.

The government is ready to clamp down on the free flow of information online. Inspired by the eagerness with which western IT businesses have moved to work with Chinese censors, Vietnam expects to receive similar treatment. The AFP quotes the Thanh Nien daily newspaper's report on December 5 that the information ministry planned to "contact Google and Yahoo about cooperating in the creation of the healthiest and best possible environment for bloggers." It is now up to these companies to show some backbone and resist being transformed into agents for Vietnamese web censors.

Otherwise, Dieu Cay and the courageous Vietnamese bloggers who express themselves freely online will have an even harder time in a so-called "healthy environment," sanitized of dissent.

Lucie Morillon is the Washington, DC, director of Reporters Without Borders, an international press freedom organization. She covers press freedom issues in the U.S. and abroad and is a spokesperson for the group. She also handles advocacy work with Congress and has appeared on CNN, ABC and has been quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other publications. Reporters Without Borders strives to obtain the release of jailed journalists and cyber-dissidents and supports an independent media and the free flow of information online. Morillon is the free-speech correspondent for MediaShift.

There are almost 69 cyber-dissidents in jail worldwide, yet Burma's Nay Phone Latt has become the first blogger to receive such a lengthy prison term. His crime? To have informed the outside world about the military junta's brutal crackdown during pro-democracy protests in September 2007.

A Rangoon court judge sentenced Nay Phone Latt to two years for violating Article 505 (b) of the Criminal Code (which criminalizes defamation of the state), three years and six months for violating Article 32 (b) of the Video Act, and 15 years for violating Article 33 (a) of the Electronic Act. In total, Latt was sentenced to over 20 years in prison.

Nay Phone Latt is the pen name of Nay Myo Kyaw, 28, the owner of two Rangoon Internet cafés. Latt also kept a blog describing the hardships of daily life in Rangoon and the obstacles faced by young Burmese people in criticizing the government since the September 2007 protests. Latt is also a youth member of the National League for Democracy (NLD), the opposition party led by the detained Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Aung San Suu Kyi. Aung San Suu was elected prime minister in 1990, but Burmese generals have yet to acknowledge her victory; the military government has kept Aung San Suu under house arrest since 2003.

Latt was arrested in Rangoon last January while in possession of a video banned by the military government. Charged in July, Nay Phone Latt has since been detained at the infamous Insein Prison, where he has been denied basic medical care.

Extremely Harsh Punishment

Nay Phone Latt's mother, who was not allowed to attend the trial inside the prison, said: "I was expecting him to get 10 to 12 years in prison at the most. I never imagined he would get this much. The authorities have been excessively cruel with him." According to Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association, the blogger's lawyer himself was jailed for criticizing the special court's procedures.

Burmese bloggers regard Nay Phone Latt as an inspirational figure -- a person who contributed greatly to the 2007 "Saffron Revolution" by showing the world digital photos of the massive anti-government demonstrations and the brutal crackdown that followed. According to the BBC World Service, his blog provided invaluable information about events within the locked-down country during the uprising.

This extremely harsh punishment is seen as an attempt by the military junta to set an example and intimidate those who use new technologies to circulate information not currently controlled by the Burmese Censorship Bureau. According to Global Voices:

A year after thousands of monks took to the streets of Burma's towns and cities to protest against the tyrannical rule of the military junta [and photos of them] were broadcast across the world via the Internet, the junta has shown that it will not tolerate any semblance of critical opinion being voiced over the World Wide Web."

Irrawaddy magazine, a Burmese news organization operating in exile, said the current crackdown is also intended to silence legal efforts to ensure fair trials for dissidents now appearing before judges in closed court sessions.

Internet Under Control

Burma, which is on Reporters Without Borders' list of Internet enemies, is described as "one of the world's least-connected countries" with a rate of Internet penetration that does not even amount to 1% of the population, according to the International Telecommunication Union. The network is regulated by the state military's Censorship Bureau, which controls the only two available ISPs in the country. It blocks access to large numbers of news websites as well as international messaging services, including Hotmail and Yahoo. Connection speeds remain the biggest obstacle to Internet access -- downloading a single article can take an hour. To help Burmese Internet users get around official state censorship, overseas Internet users often send proxy lists to small networks of trusted local bloggers.

From the end of August to mid-October 2007, Burma experienced its biggest uprising since the 1988 student demonstrations, in which 3,000 died. Thousands of Buddhist monks, joined by students and activists, took to the streets to protest against deteriorating living conditions.

In response to this so-called "Saffron Revolution," the government shut down all Internet connections in a deliberate attempt to isolate the country and prevent any witness accounts from reaching the outside world. During these two weeks of blackout, the Internet was only accessible a few hours a day and all cyber cafés were closed. The only news source available to Burmese citizens during this time was satellite TV or foreign radio stations.

According to an Open Net Initiative December 2007 report on Burma:

The shutdown of Internet connectivity was precipitated by its use by citizens to send photographs, updates and videos that documented the violent suppression of protests in Burma, information that contributed to widespread international condemnation of the Burmese military rulers' gross violations of human rights.

Far From the World's Eyes

One year ago, thanks to the information sent out by Burmese bloggers, news of the crackdown circled the globe. Since then, the world's attention has shifted, and the regime has resumed its crackdown on dissidents.

Philip Robertson, director of Asia Human Rights Labour Advocates, told Al Jazeera that "post [Cyclone] Nargis, the international community's attention has moved elsewhere so we're seeing a larger crackdown all over Myanmar, with student leaders, monks, and even senior lawyers working for the NLD being thrown in jail."

Strong condemnations worldwide

However, Nay Phone Latt's extremely harsh sentence, as well as the arrest of other dissidents and lawyers, has again sparked outraged reactions worldwide. The U.S. State Department recently called for the release of four detained defense lawyers. U.S. President George W. Bush has nominated Michael Green, a former top adviser on Asian affairs, as special envoy and policy chief for Myanmar to increase pressure on the country's military government.

The foreign ministers of the 27 European Union countries have deplored the lack of progress in Burma since the violent repression of peaceful protests last year, and the European Union stated on Monday that it would consider Burmese elections scheduled for 2010 to be illegitimate unless the ruling military junta first frees all political prisoners -- particularly Aung San Suu Kyi.

Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association have launched a campaign calling for the release of Nay Phone Latt. In a press release, they have asked "for bloggers all over the world to demonstrate their solidarity with Nay Phone Latt by posting his photo on their blogs and writing to Burmese embassies worldwide to demand his release."

Lucie Morillon is the Washington, DC, director of Reporters Without Borders, an international press freedom organization. She covers press freedom issues in the U.S. and abroad and is a spokesperson for the group. She also handles advocacy work with Congress and has appeared on CNN, ABC and has been quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other publications. Reporters Without Borders strives to obtain the release of jailed journalists and cyber-dissidents and supports an independent media and the free flow of information online. Morillon is the free-speech correspondent for MediaShift.

Fu Jianfeng, an editor at Southern Weekend posted a damning indictment on his blog after the scandal became public in September:

Actually, our reporter He Feng had received the information at the end of July that more than 20 babies were hospitalized for kidney stones in Tongji Hospital, Wuhan city, Hubei province as a result of consuming the tainted Sanlu milk powder. But for reasons that everybody knows, we were not able to investigate the case at that time because harmony was needed everywhere. As a news editor, I was deeply concerned because I sensed that this was going to be a huge public health catastrophe. But I could not send any reporters to investigate. Therefore, I harbored a deep sense of guilt and defeat at the time.

How did this happen? How was it that the Chinese government once again put its desire to control the flow of information before its citizens' health? And how was it that companies, some of which were foreign, were able to keep a scandal of this scale secret for such a long time?

China's Propaganda Department -- a censorship office that answers directly to the Communist Party's Politburo -- circulated a 21-point directive to the Chinese media on the eve of the Beijing Olympics declaring certain subjects off-limits for media coverage. Point 8 was very clear: "All subjects linked to food safety, such as mineral water that causes cancer, are off-limits." In the face of worldwide distrust of the quality of its products, the Chinese government chose silence.

The Chinese press and blogosphere had to say nothing. The editors of liberal publications such as Southern Weekend know only too well the price for violating decrees issued by Beijing's censors. Three members of the same media group spent several years in prison after reporting a case of SARS without official permission in 2003. One of them was released this past February.

Repeating Past Mistakes

The tainted milk affair is a tragic repetition of the 2003 mistakes. The SARS epidemic emerged at the start of the winter of 2002 but Chinese authorities covered it up for as long as possible to avoid scaring away foreign investment. When a military doctor revealed that Chinese officials were hiding the SARS epidemic, the government finally allowed the press to begin talking about it; the government swore that it would not repeat the same mistake. If only that had been the case.

The authorities have continuously tried to suppress food and health scandals. In 2004, police banned foreign journalists and bloggers from visiting provinces affected by bird flu. In 2007, authorities tried to censor information about an epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease in the eastern province of Shandong. Meanwhile, it has always been hard for reporters to visit villages in the center of the country where thousands are dying of cancer or AIDS.

In 2006, the Chinese government virtually inscribed its censorship policies in stone when it promulgated an emergency management law that included heavy fines for news media that published unauthorized information about industrial accidents, natural disasters, public health emergencies or social unrest. The authorities had initially even envisaged prison sentences for violators before backing off.

Chinese officials have not only censored the mainstream press, but also the new media. Internet censorship is ensured by the 11 Commandments of the Internet, which forbids online editors from covering 11 sensitive subjects, including items that:

> endanger national security
> destroy the country's reputation and benefits
> spread rumors, endanger public order and create social uncertainty
> include illegal information bounded by law and administrative rules

The censors continue to quash reports on the Sanlu tainted milk. A blog post on the scandal by Southern Weekend editor Fu Jianfeng was removed from the Internet and Jianfeng now faces official harassment. It took only two days for Chinese web censors to set up filters to block key words related to the scandal.

Nart Villeneuve, a Psiphon Fellow with the Citizen Lab, an Internet and politics research group at the University of Toronto, has discovered a huge surveillance system in China that monitors and archives Internet text conversations that include politically charged words. His report Breaching Trust: An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China's TOM-Skype platform spots "milk powder" as one of the restricted phrases.

According to a report from the Nanfang Dushi Bao (Southern Metropolis Daily) translated by ESWN and posted on Global Voices Online, some Chinese Netizens are accusing popular Chinese search engine Baidu of censoring its search results. A Netizen at DoNews pointed out that Baidu yielded more results than Google when searching for "Wenchuan+earthquake" but fewer when searching for "Sanlu+melamine." This prompted the question: "Why is it that Baidu falls behind Google when Sanlu milk powder is posing a huge risk against public health?" Some bloggers went even further, accusing Sanlu of paying Baidu to block embarrassing search results.

Curtailing Online Coverage

According to a September 29 report by Chinese Human Rights Defenders, authorities have ordered newspapers to relegate scandal coverage to less prominent sections of their publications, highlight the attention paid to the issue by top officials, print only articles written by official state news agency Xinhua, and focus on positive news in general. In addition, blogs and online articles about the issue have been deleted and blocked on popular websites such as Sina, Sohu and NetEase.

Chinese journalists have been expelled from the province where Sanlu has its headquarters. And a group of volunteer lawyers representing the parents of poisoned babies have been subject to official pressure. Meanwhile, New Zealand-based Fonterra, a shareholder in Sanlu, has been slow to provide information to the authorities.

The government is now moving to help the poisoned babies and identify those responsible for the crisis, and the Chinese president has even called on companies to learn lessons from the scandal. But has the government thought about its own role in all of this? And what about foreign governments? Other countries prefer to restrict Chinese imports rather than clearly tell the Chinese government that its behaviour is irresponsible. And the World Health Organization? Director-General Margaret Chan has done little more than to advise Chinese women to breast-feed more often.

Netizens' anger and disgust has been strong. Despite the efforts from the web censors, the Chinese blogosphere remains defiant and outspoken about the crisis. Global Voices has collected some reactions from Chinese bloggers:

> One worried that the situation will only worsen if the Chinese government continues to tolerate corporate corruption.

> Another criticized government control over the media: "This is a tragedy for hundreds of thousands families. However, the sad story is being transformed into a happy story -- what we hear now are honorable stories about those leaders and people working in the government...There is a proverb: 'After disasters, a country will be stronger.' I think this proverb should be understood as 'When the citizens are suffering from disasters, the Communist Party of China becomes stronger and stronger.'"

Spurred on by increasingly restless bloggers, the Chinese media is trying to fulfill the role that the press everywhere is meant to play: that of questioning and challenging the government. But to do that, they will first have to fight the Propaganda Department, a bastion of conservatism whose sole goal is to muzzle the press and the new media at any price.

Lucie Morillon is the Washington, DC, director of Reporters Without Borders, an international press freedom organization. She covers press freedom issues in the U.S. and abroad and is a spokesperson for the group. She also handles advocacy work with Congress and has appeared on CNN, ABC and has been quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other publications. Reporters Without Borders strives to obtain the release of jailed journalists and cyber-dissidents and supports an independent media and the free flow of information online. Morillon is the free-speech correspondent for MediaShift.

Women in Iran have learned to unleash the Internet's potential to promote freedom. In the country that has, according to the OpenNet Initiative, experienced the most explosive online growth in the Middle East, the Internet has become a battleground between a repressive regime and the increasingly active feminists demanding the end of legal discrimination against women.

Women activists, who in the 1990s relied on public demonstrations, in-person contacts and door-to-door advocacy, have now taken their initiatives to cyberspace. The feminist Campaign for Equality launched an online petition called One Million Signatures Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws in August 2006; it has already garnered more than 10,000 signatures. Radio podcasts dealing with women's issues are accessible on the activists' websites, and women also circulate information through expanding email lists.

For the first time, the women's movement is not restricted to a certain elite, but includes women of all ages and backgrounds, from big cities to small villages. All these women are united in support of this cause -- women who now share the same dream of no longer being second-class citizens.

After a wave of repression in the '80s, Iranian mothers were reticent to let their daughters contest the new order. In contrast, today many support their daughters fighting for equal rights and some older women even get involved themselves. The power of the Internet, accessible to everyone, has removed the class barrier, allowing all woman to receive and exchange information. The movement has no centralized leadership: The Campaign for Equality is spearheaded by acting or former journalists or novelists barred from writing about their aspirations in the government-monitored mainstream media.

Background on Women's Rights in Iran

The Iranian legal system is based on the Sharia, the Islamic law, and denies women many rights, including the rights to file for divorce or to claim custody of their children. Women are treated as second-class citizens in other ways, too:

> A woman's court testimony is afforded less value than that of a man.

> In cases of wrongful injury or death, a woman's punitive damages are limited to half those of a man.

> In cases of adultery, both partners can be sentenced to stoning, but a woman is stoned while buried up to her neck while a man's arms are left free.

> The legal age of judicial responsibility is 15 for boys, but only 9 for girls -- meaning that girls as young as 9 can be executed as adults.

The repressive Iranian regime does not tolerate criticism. It fears the women's movement not only because it could elevate the status of women but also for its potential to fuel a broader trend demanding democratic reform in the country.

The government dismisses any accusations that it discriminates against women, but, according to Amnesty International, "women in Iran face far-reaching discrimination under the law." Even so, Amnesty found that "with the increase of women's literacy in the last 30 years, women are increasingly empowered to challenge discrimination."

Activists Are Jailed

Several activists have been imprisoned for speaking out. Two "cyber-feminists" were held for more than a month at the infamous Evin prison in December after writing articles calling for equal rights with men. Jail was the one place they reported receiving equal treatment with men: Both men and women are made to endure very bad prison conditions and multiple interrogation sessions. When journalist Jila Baniyaghoob was released, she spoke of being locked away in a filthy cell, awakened several times each night and led, blindfolded, to yet another interrogation. She spent over a week in the notorious section 209, a detention center where Iranian secret services can hold political prisoners in solitary confinement and conduct torture with complete impunity.

Jila runs an association of Iranian women who have been active in spreading the word about women's untold ordeals. She has published on her website stories ignored by the mainstream media for lack of interest or fear of official retribution. One such story was that of medical student Dr. Zahra Bani Yaghoob, who was arrested while walking with her fiance in a park in Hamedan province. The two were unable to show a legal marriage certificate when confronted by the local militia. Later that day, the police called her family to pick her up.

But when relatives arrived, they were told Yaghoob had committed suicide, a story disputed by her family and friends. Jila and others helped publicize the case, especially after a local judge acquitted the men suspected of killing Yaghoob. Thanks to pressure brought by these feminists, the case has now been moved to Tehran.

Speaking out is still dangerous for women in Iran. Jila has received many death threats because of her involvement in the Yaghoob case. In March 2007, 33 female journalists and activists were arrested while demonstrating for their rights. Four received prison sentences ranging from six months to a year.

Several days ago, cyber-feminists Parvin Ardalan, Jelveh Javaheri, Maryam Hosseinkhah, and Nahid Keshavarz, were sentenced to six months in prison after writing about women's rights for online newspapers like Zanestan. They are still free pending the outcome of their appeals, but a sword of Damocles clearly hangs over their heads. Their sentences were intended to send a strong warning to force other female activists into self-censorship.

These four cyber-feminists, however, can count on domestic and international support: Ardalan was awarded Sweden's Olof Palme Prize this year. Famous Nobel Prize recipient, women's rights activist and lawyer Shirin Ebadi has agreed to represent all four. She told Reporters Without Borders earlier this month: "These four journalists have been convicted just for writing articles and criticizing laws that are unfair to Iranian women."

Internet No Longer a Safe Haven

The Internet is no longer a safe heaven for free expression in Iran. A draft law passed by Parliament on first reading last July would extend the death penalty to crimes committed online, including bloggers and website editors who "promote corruption, prostitution or apostasy." Shirin Ebadi told Reporters Without Borders that she was "worried because I see the situation getting worse. If Parliament ratifies the new law increasing sentences for crimes against society's moral security, bloggers could get prison sentences."

The backlash is not limited to judicial persecution. Authorities have also used technology to stop the activists. Iran is on Reporters Without Borders' list of Internet enemies and has one of the world's most extensive and sophisticated systems for censoring and filtering Internet content.

In recent years. women's rights have become one of the top subjects targeted by government web censors, along with sites advocating political reform or hosting pornography. The online newspaper Tagir Bary Barbary ("Change for Equality") was forced to change its URL after it was blocked several times. To get around official censorship, several "One Million Signatures" campaign websites are now hosted in various Iranian cities as well as in other countries, including the United States, Germany and Kuwait.

With the "One Million Signatures" campaign, the women's movement in Iran has reached a new dimension beyond gender-only issues. The Men's Committee of the One Million Signatures Campaign has also been collecting signatures. One of it members, Amir Yaghoub Ali, was arrested in July 2007 and spent 29 days in the Evin Prison. In an interview, he told Mahboubeh Hosseinzadeh that men's involvement proves that "unequal laws do not only affect women, but harm all of society --- as they affect family and human relations more broadly." But there are still many conservative forces within the Islamic republic who disapprove of the campaign.

Now the question is: What will happen once the one million signatures have been collected?

Activists believe the government will not be able to ignore them once they have collected such a huge number of signatures. The movement has become stronger than ever. Earlier this month, it scored a real success. The Parliament was debating a government-sponsored "protection of the family" bill that included two articles that would have allowed a man to take a second wife without his first wife's permission and submitted the women's dowry to taxes respectively. Lawmakers removed the articles after women activists threatened to hold peaceful demonstrations in front of the Parliament.

The authorities should think twice before rejecting the women's demands or the One Million Signatures campaign could very well become a "One Million Person Demonstration."

Lucie Morillon is the Washington, DC, director of Reporters Without Borders, an international press freedom organization. She covers press freedom issues in the U.S. and abroad and is a spokesperson for the group. She also handles advocacy work with Congress and has appeared on CNN, ABC and has been quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other publications. Reporters Without Borders strives to obtain the release of jailed journalists and cyber-dissidents and supports an independent media and the free flow of information online. Morillon is the free-speech correspondent for MediaShift.