Who would have thought that access to my blog is blocked if you are trying to read it from Iran, after I have published so many articles about Iran? The censors of the Islamic Republic don’t seem to like what I write. Luckily, I remember from my last visit to Iran in June 2009 that almost everyone in Iran knew how to circumvent the internet censorship by using proxy servers:

I was sitting in an internet café (in Iran they are called “coffee-net”) at Enqelab Avenue in Tehran and couldn’t access the sites of BBC or CNN. A woman sitting next to me noticed my despair and gave me her memory stick and explained that I should copy a programme called FreeGate which would help me to circumvent the censorship. It worked very well and after looking at the screens of the other users in this internet café, I noticed that more than half must have been using this or similar software because they were watching the YouTube video of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan who had just been shot and killed 2 days before.

This is what blocked sites looked like in Iran in June 2009:

When this site first appeared on my screen, I was afraid what the people sitting to my left and right or the owner of the internet café would do, but they just smiled knowingly.

If you live in any other country that regularly blocks internet sites, like North Korea, China, Syria (I remember from my visit to Syria that all websites with an .il domain [from Israel] were blocked) or Cuba, could you please take a screenshot of what it looks like when you try to access a blocked site and e-mail it to me? Thank you very much in advance!

Here is a screenshot of what my blog looks like in Iran in 2011:

The current censorship not only blocks my site, but helpfully suggests many other alternatives for your virtuous browsing.

From a friend in Turkmenistan, I heard in January 2012 that my blog is blocked there. A message “The requested URL was not found” pops up.