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Electronic discrimination: Iran’s web-based enemies

By Kourosh Ziabari - posted Tuesday, 22 January 2013


In a report from 21 March 2012, the CNet's political correspondent Declan McCullagh wrote that Google had also restricted Iranian users' access to Android Market, known as Google Play.

Collin Anderson, an independent researcher in North Dakota has listed a number of U.S.-based technology products that are unavailable to Iranian users. These products include, but are not limited to, Apple's iOS app store, McAfee's antivirus software, Oracle's Java and MySQL, Adobe Acrobat Reader, DropBox, Real Player, Google AdWords, and Google Android Market.

But the unfair measures taken by the U.S. government, as dictated to the American internet, IT and other technology-related service providers, have gone beyond the pale and are now taking the form of racial discrimination. In June 2012 it was reported that an Apple Store in Alpharetta, Georgia refused to sell an iPhone and iPad to Persian-speaking customers, resorting to the excuse that they may send at least one of these devices to their friends in Iran!

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When Sara Sabet, a 19-year-old student at Georgia University went to an Apple Store in a local mall with her friend to buy a couple of iDevices, the salesperson found her speaking in a foreign language. The employee asked her what language she spoke, where she was from and where the iPad and iPhone she wished to buy would be heading. She responded by saying that she is from Iran and wanted to send the devices to her friend in Iran. It was then that the Apple employee responded by saying, "I just can't sell this to you. Our countries have bad relations." Sabet said that the left the store and shed tears all the way back home.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called the Apple Store's treatment of the Iranian student discriminatory. In a statement issued in condemnation, CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said: "Apple must revise its policies to ensure that customers do not face discriminatory treatment based on their religion, ethnicity or national origin. If the actions of these Apple employees reflected company policy, that policy must be changed and all employees retrained."

Overall, this is how the Iranians are being treated by a government which has always been busy trumpeting its anxiety and nervousness for the protection of human rights around the world. Perhaps Iranians are paying the price for the independence of their nation and their refusal to be brought under the hegemonic domination of the United States. These sanctions which directly affect the daily lives of ordinary citizens show the extent to which the U.S. government can be brutal and ruthless to deprive a nation of its most rudimentary and basic rights. Can anyone really understand what Uncle Sam is doing?

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Article edited by Michaela Epstein.
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About the Author

Kourosh Ziabari is an award-winning Iranian journalist, writer and media correspondent. In 2010, he won the presidential medal of Superior Iranian Youth for his media activities. He has also won the first prize of Iran's 18th Press Festival in the category of political articles. He has interviewed more than 200 public intellectuals, academicians, media personalities, politicians, thinkers and Nobel Prize laureates. His articles and interviews have been published in such media outlets as Press TV, Tehran Times, Iran Review, Global Research, Al-Arabiya, Your Middle East, Counter Currents, On Line Opinion and Voltaire Network and translated in Arabic, French, German, Turkish, Italian and Spanish.

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