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CORCORAN: There’s nothing virtual about this reality.
In Iran today, to be a reformist is to live dangerously. Islamic fundamentalists have crushed the brief flowering of democracy. Dissent that is tolerated this week, can lead to arrest, torture or disappearance the next.

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CORCORAN: Iran’s religious conservatives are once more reasserting their control over the Islamic Republic, while the reformists are being driven underground and online.
But now a new wave of dissent is emerging. This is the story of Iran’s cyber dissidents, who are managing to stay one keystroke ahead of the hardline mob.

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CORCORAN: They’re taking their pro-democracy campaign online as web bloggers, documenting an increasingly vicious political cycle of protest, mass arrest and repression.
Farid Modarresi is a student turned cyber-dissident, who at great personal risk, has decided to step out from behind the screen of anonymity to take us on a real world tour of his Iran.

CORCORAN: Could they shut you down if they wanted to?

FARID: It is easy, very easy for them.

CORCORAN: So what happens then if they shut this down?

FARID: For sure I’ll find another way.

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CORCORAN: Twelve million people live in Iran’s capital Tehran, many of them keen to escape the grim urban reality of the Islamic Republic. And the best place to go is online.
Seventy per cent of Iranians are aged under thirty, with no memory of the Islamic revolution that swept the fundamentalists to power in 1979.

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CORCORAN: These children of the revolution, log onto an outside world of jobs and a more liberal lifestyle -- aspirations the regime is failing to deliver. In four years, the authorities have blocked fifteen thousand sites, but the internet genie is already out of the bottle.

FARID: I think Iranians want to express themselves
whether it’s weblog, writing newspapers or by any other means as long as it’s no risk to them.

CORCORAN: A battle for the hearts and minds of Iran’s youth is now being waged in cyberspace. Iran’s ruling mullahs, recognising the power of the net, deliver their message to the students through this online propaganda service.
But the enemy lies within, for it’s here in the service’s newsroom that we first meet twenty four year old Farid, a student and online reporter who until now, has concealed his blogger activities from colleagues.

FARID: You have to be like that in Iran if you want to survive.

CORCORAN: To speak more freely we adjourn to a Tehran park. Farid’s journey down the path to cyber dissidence began seven years ago handing out election campaign leaflets for Iran’s reformist President Mohammed Khatami.

FARID: When I started to get politically involved, it was an era when the social character of all young people was being shaped and my activities coincided with the beginning of Khatami’s reform policies.

CORCORAN: With a mammoth seventy per cent of the vote, Khatami promised to transform Iran into an Islamic democracy.
In 1999, unprecedented student protests against the conservatives gave the Khatami vision a huge boost,
but the hardliners slowly crushed the political life out of the moderates.

Earlier this year, conservative clerics rigged a landslide Parliamentary election by disqualifying nearly all reformist candidates. Only half of Iran’s disillusioned voters bothered to cast a ballot.

Abandoned by his student supporters, Khatami publicly admitted failure. Next year he’ll be replaced by a hardliner.

CORCORAN: What’s to stop the hardliners tomorrow morning bringing a massive crack down and you and hundreds, or perhaps thousands of others, being rounded up?

FARID: They don’t need to -- the conservatives achieved their goals through the weakness of the reformists, so they don’t need to use oppression against the governmental reformists.

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CORCORAN: Confident of their grip on power, the conservatives permit the annual Tehran Book and Media Fair to proceed as scheduled, despite predictions the event will become a rallying point for regime opponents.

For Farid, it’s a golden opportunity to network and chase stories for him webblog.

FARID: This time reform should be led by people who have no ties with the Government and can act independently.

CORCORAN: The book fair attracts massive crowds providing a rare public outing in a country that heavily restricts entertainment and debate. The conservative mullahs are also here selling a moral message.

MULLAH: The reporting of an event is not a problem, as long as it doesn’t encourage prostitution.

CORCORAN: Putting in an appearance is Iran’s most prominent dissident, Ibrahim Yazdi, the Islamic Revolution’s first Foreign Minister. He turned reformist and was jailed in the nineties, but students stay Yazdi is tolerated only because he’s yesterday’s man.

IBRAHIM YAZDI: We believe there is no contradiction between Islam and democracy according to our Constitution. There are some groups who don’t believe that. They are the conservatives, backward traditionalists and they don’t like that one and so this is the result.

CORCORAN: The result, says Farid, is a systematic attempt by conservatives to crush all public debate. More than one hundred papers have been closed in the past four years and many journalists detained. Farid introduces us to twenty five year old Sara Abdi who so far has escaped that fate, defiantly setting up a new paper under a different title.

CORCORAN: Why was the other newspaper banned?

SARA ABDI: It was banned because it published the open letter to the Parliament, to the Supreme Leader.

CORCORAN: The letter criticised the blatant rigging of the Parliamentary elections.

CORCORAN: How tough is it being in newspapers in Iran today?

SARA ABDI: Very difficult. Very tough.

CORCORAN: Sara also runs a petition demanding the release from prison of her uncle Abbas Abdi.

As a student leader in 1979, he took part in the storming of the US Embassy when 55 Americans were taken hostage. But Abdi changed his views.

In 2002 he published an opinion poll finding that three quarters of Iranians wanted to resume relations with the U.S.
The regime charged him with espionage and sentenced him to seven years jail.

SARA ABDI: His condition has improved a lot given that he’s in prison -- psychologically as well -- but I can’t say anything.

I’m in a situation where I can’t answer things that I know.

CORCORAN: “Death to America” they chant – the unofficial anthem of the Islamic revolution. Today, demonstrators take to Tehran’s streets demanding a U.S. withdrawal from neighbouring Iraq. But there’s not a student in sight. This is a hardline rent-a-crowd, bussed in for the occasion on the promise of a day off work.

FARID: They are a legitimate Mafia -- legitimate from their own point of view.

They try to convince their own people what they are doing has a framework of religion, but they are just using religion as an instrument.

CORCORAN: Hardliners say allegations of election rigging and the imprisonment of Iran’s reformists are merely western propaganda, while the cyber dissidents are simply dismissed as misguided youth.

HUSSEIN SHARIATMADARI: There is no danger in our youth using the internet..

We just have to lead them in the correct and precise way

CORCORAN: Hussein Shariatmadari is a conservative newspaper publisher. More importantly, he’s a close confidant of the real power in Iran – the religious Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameni.

CORCORAN: If, as you say, you are not that concerned about the dissent, the debate, why then have so many been put in jail? Why then have so many websites been shut down?

HUSSEIN SHARIATMADARI: Currently we only shut down the websites and blogs that have destructive moral effects. As to those questions -- how many young people are in jail -- in my opinion we have few, and those who are there, are there for other reasons. In fact this is sheer Western propaganda.

CORCORAN: In Tehran the public are given an unprecedented opportunity to laugh at the regime from the safety of a darkened cinema.

This movie titled “The Lizard” tells the story of a criminal who escapes from jail by posing as a Mullah. To escape the censor, Iranian films are usually heavily laden with obscure metaphors, but The Lizard leaves little to the imagination.
Film Dialogue: What the means, for you there is one way to find God. And for that fellow sitting there – no, not you – the other one – there’s another way.

CORCORAN: The Lizard plays to packed houses. Lining up to buy tickets is a form of civil disobedience with cinemagoers ignoring the intimidating stares of security agents from across the street. Farid is keen to gauge public opinion - dangerous ground - as ridiculing the clergy is regarded as subversion.

FARID: Why have so many people been attracted to this film?

IRANIAN WOMAN: We like it because it is a comedy. On the other hand it creates an atmosphere for criticising a group of people who until now hadbeen untouchable.

CORCORAN: Every week Farid makes a pilgrimage to the Holy City of Qom, a couple of hours drive from Tehran. It’s always a journey of mixed emotions, to a city of Islamic scholars and seminaries, where the revolution was incubated, but Qom is also his home, where he grew up.

Farid is greeted with a huge sense of relief by his father, Mohsen a retired journalist, mother Fazeh, and two younger brothers. They fear a repetition of the day when Farid didn’t come home. Two years ago he was among several hundred students arrested and jailed for marching in an anti-government protest.

FAZEH: I became very upset -- so upset that I felt the walls were closing in on me. But gradually I reached the point that this is what can happen to any young politically active person. Then afterwards his father tried very often to console me.

CORCORAN: Do you worry about his safety? Politics in Iran can be a very dangerous game.

MOHSEN: Yes. Yes, I am very worried -- but first of all I think every young Iranian should take this course.

CORCORAN: Farid was held in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison for one month before his release, an event his family insisted on secretly videoing.

Six months later, an Iranian Canadian journalist, Zara Kazemi, who also attempted to film outside this same prison, was arrested and allegedly murdered in custody. In Iran, Evin is synonymous with fear. Farid’s mother is distraught until moments before his release, never quite sure, fearing the worst and with good reason. According to the New York based group “Human Rights Watch”, Evin Prison has in the last four years, become a key detention and torture centre for hundreds, possibly thousands, of regime opponents.

FARID: There are thousands of cases where we don’t know what has happened to them… because in a country like ours, the jails are not monitored properly.

CORCORAN: Are you prepared to die for the cause?

FARID: No, I’m definitely not ready to die, because it wouldn’t be worthwhile. It’s too high a price for an individual to pay.

CORCORAN: While Farid walks a fine line between tolerance and imprisonment, others publicly declare themselves enemies of a regime they vow to destroy. Carrying a concealed camera, I meet a member of a new underground group, the National Alliance Front. He agrees to be interviewed, but insists we keep moving, driving a taxi as he talks through a city teeming with security agents.

HASAN: My name is Hasan Fazllulahi. I’m not worried about the Islamic authorities -- if I’m a bit cautious it is because I don’t want to be arrested without warning. If my family members can be notified just before my arrest, then I don’t care if I’m arrested.

CORCORAN: Prison, says Hasan, is a revolving door. Tens of thousands are briefly jailed, intimidated then released, while the ringleaders stay behind bars.

CORCORAN: How many dissidents and reformists are in jail now?

HASAN: About four to five hundred.

CORCORAN: A veteran of the 1980’s Iran-Iraq war, Hasan was wounded three times but he’s now lost faith in a revolution he was once prepared to die for.

HASAN: I’m fighting for my rights. I fought for seven years at the front. I’m already fifty per cent disabled. My skull is artificial… I lost one of my kidneys… That means I have given my blood for the Islamic Republic --for this regime.

CORCORAN: Hasan claims his religion and country have been hijacked by extremists. Already jailed three times for coordinating street protests, Hasan says security agents are looking for him and he expects to be tortured and killed if rearrested.

HASAN: These people think they can impose their will through terror and oppression and silence the people so they can do these sorts of things. The system will definitely change – it’s unavoidable.

CORCORAN: At a Tehran Arts Centre, a group of middle class women with everything to lose, quietly assembles in the coffee shop. This is a rare public gathering of feminist web bloggers, a meeting to discuss women’s rights in the increasingly oppressive political climate. But even with our camera rolling, security agents move in demanding the women leave.

CORCORAN: This is a public meeting though, it’s in a public place.

CORCORAN: The group defiantly reconvenes in the street outside, monitored by a growing band of police and security men. Web blogger Mahsa Shekarloo explains the agenda.MAHSA

SHEKARLOO: TV and radio in Iran is controlled by the regime and it’s a protest to the stereotypical and negative images of Iranian women.

CORCORAN: On a superficial level there have been changes. The once strict Islamic dress code has been relaxed but Mahsa says Iranian women still face discrimination in getting jobs and being treated as equals in society.

CORCORAN: If you’ve lost faith in the so-called reformists in Parliament, how do you effect change?

MAHSA SHEKARLOO: Well you go it by holding meetings like this. You use any available avenues that you have. One reason why the internet is so popular here is precisely for that reason. It’s an independent space, relatively accessible, or at least relatively uncontrolled.

CORCORAN: Do you think you’re being subversive in the eyes of the regime?

MAHSA SHEKARLOO: I don’t know. I mean I guess that’s something you’d have to ask the regime.

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CORCORAN: The regime tends to answer with direct action, not debate. The week after Farid attended this screening, The Lizard was withdrawn from cinemas by the films producers after leading Ayatollahs accused it of creating “social corruption”. As for Hasan, a widower with children, he is already making preparations for the inevitable.

HASAN: I’ve lost everything, nothing matters for me anymore. I have two children who have lost a mother. If I know that they are going to arrest me in two hours, my only wish is to have time to secure my children -- then I would personally hand myself in.

CORCORAN: Just days after our taxi rendezvous, ten members of Hasan’s group were arrested while secretly meeting to draft an opposition manifesto. They’ve not been heard of since. Hasan’s fate is unknown.

The call to prayer in the Holy City of Qom - for the moment Iran’s conservatives believe the cyber dissidents are fragmented and intimidated, and they may be right. Yet Farid and the other reformists continue to quietly work the streets, networking, observing, blogging. But the risks are immense. Farid knows that participating in this programme could cost him his job and his freedom.

CORCORAN: In your view, is the reformist movement dead?

FARID: No, in fact it is in a coma, and it will only become stronger with new tools, new energy and a new leadership.

CORCORAN: Iran’s cyber dissidents can now only watch and wait in the belief that youth, time and the power of the internet will eventually make their online dream of democracy a reality.

Reporter: Mark Corcoran
Camera: Ron Ekkel
Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen
Producer: Vivien Altman