Approximately one month after the illegal blocking of Sadaf Fatemi’s SIM card, the content published by this journalist was also removed from her social media pages, and an image designed by the “Working Group on Determining Criminal Internet Offenses” was published on her Twitter and Instagram accounts.
On Wednesday, October 9, 2024 (Mehr 18, 1403), tweets and posts published by Sadaf Fatemi were deleted from her X and Instagram pages. Shortly after, an image appeared on Sadaf Fatemi’s X page that users encounter when searching for blocked websites in Iran. The image prominently displays the message: “Access to the blocked website is not possible.”
About a month prior, Sadaf Fatemi’s SIM card had been cut off without prior notice and in the absence of a judicial order. The conditions imposed on Sadaf Fatemi are not the first instance of illegal actions taken by the judiciary and security agencies of the Islamic Republic against journalists. In recent months, the SIM cards of several journalists and political activists have been cut off—without a judicial order—due to their reporting on various events or for publishing critical posts on social media. After these journalists and activists pursued their cases through various authorities, the reinstatement of their SIM cards was conditioned on signing a commitment not to publish critical posts. This illegal action by security agencies indicates that the Islamic Republic is actively developing patterns of suppression of free information in Iran.
In recent decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has designed and implemented multiple patterns for the suppression of freedom of expression and disruption of the free flow of information; these patterns have increasingly made independent journalism more difficult and limited the freedom of expression of Iranian citizens.