Iranian officials have filed cases against people in Iran for liking social media posts critical of the Islamic Republic, according to Dadban, an online pro bono legal group which provides legal advice to human rights campaigners in Iran.
The group posted an update on social media platform X on Oct. 8 which said several individuals had been charged with serious offenses such as “insulting the Leader of the Islamic Republic” and “propaganda against the regime,” solely for liking Instagram posts generated by news agencies or users critical of the regime. Most of the individuals charged lived in small towns, with some cases submitted in larger cities such as Mashhad, Dadban said in the post.
Legal experts expressed concern at the widening scope of government control embedded into a new espionage bill which gives officials excessive control over citizens’ every day activities.
“The existing judicial practice in this area is sometimes so illogical and absurd that it’s hard to believe,” Musa Barzin, a lawyer working at Dadban and a legal advisor to the IranWire newspaper said in an Oct. 13 post on Dadban’s X account. “There have been cases where individuals have been accused of espionage merely for carrying out ordinary activities. For example, a person once prepared an analytical report based on newspaper articles and sent it to an institution. Still, this act alone became the basis for an espionage charge.”
“Before the enactment of the Law on Intensifying Punishment for Espionage, under the previous legal framework, only classified and confidential information could serve as the basis for an espionage charge. In other words, even if information was important but not officially classified, it could not be treated as espionage,” Barzin said.
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The Islamic Republic has imposed increasingly draconian restrictions on a range of activities such as internet use in recent years, with blocks on social media and messaging platforms including Facebook, Telegram, X and YouTube. The Islamic Republic consistently ranks among the worst countries in the world for internet freedom. It has also developed a system which can impose shutdowns at speed, and for extended periods of time, using the kill switch model which bypasses compliance from internet providers.
The crackdown on free speech follows the introduction of the espionage bill in parliament, which is designed to broaden government oversight of social media platforms and online activity deemed a security risk. Convictions for security related offenses can carry the death penalty.
“They want to intimidate the public so they don’t exploit the political establishment’s weakness by taking to the streets,” former judge and Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi told the Radio Free Europe newspaper in an Oct. 1 interview. “People’s lives have become tools for the survival of the ruling establishment.”
The legislation’s text was published by reformist online newspaper Entekhab, which included punishments for the publication or dissemination of ‘fake news’ and the production or sharing of content which could cause public fear and panic, or appear contrary to national security. Those acts were deemed to amount to ‘corruption on earth’ a crime which can lead to imprisonment.
The legislation also sets out punishments for sharing audio, video and text with foreign networks, opposition states, news agencies and social media accounts if considered to be a national security concern.
Additionally, the law bans the use of the Starlink satellite service founded by Elon Musk, which aims to provide global internet access. Starlink’s high-speed internet has the ability to bypass online censorship laws owing to its constellation of satellites orbiting the earth, which are harder for authoritarian governments to access and control.
“Given that espionage carries very severe punishments—ranging from up to ten years in prison under normal circumstances to even the death penalty in more serious cases—the combination of harsh penalties and vague legal definitions marks the beginning of a very dangerous process within the country’s judicial and security system,” Barzin said on X. “In other words, from now on, no one will be safe, since any action, speech, or contact could, at the discretion of security agencies, be interpreted as espionage.”
The Islamic Republic has been condemned by the United Nations and international human rights bodies for its ongoing efforts to restrict the population’s freedom of expression, association and assembly.
In June 2024, criminal cases were filed against hundreds of people for publicly criticizing Ebrahim Raisi after he died. Hundreds more received threatening phone calls after officials announced that anyone who encouraged a boycott of the presidential election would be committing a crime, according to a 2024 report by Amnesty International. The U.N. has repeatedly criticized the Islamic Republic for what it called “systematic repression” of any dissent in the country, including news reporting by independent journalists, and activists.
“It remains to be seen how the new law will actually be implemented and how judges will interpret it,” Barzin said in the post. “But what is certain is that this path could have grave consequences for activists, journalists, academics, and ordinary citizens alike.”
