TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian authorities have slowed Internet connections to a crawl or choked them off completely before expected student protests Monday to deny the opposition a vital means of communication.In another familiar tactic before such rallies, authorities have ordered journalists working for foreign media organizations not to leave their offices to cover the demonstrations.
Iran's beleaguered opposition has sought to maintain momentum with periodic demonstrations coinciding with state-sanctioned events. Monday's rallies will take place on a day that normally marks a 1953 killing of three students at an anti-U.S. protest. Since the 1990s, the day has served as an occasion for pro-reform protests.
Students are at the center of the opposition to Iran's clerical regime and its brutal crackdown on demonstrators protesting what they believed was a fraudulent presidential election in June.
The opposition, which relies on the Web and cell phone service to organize rallies and get its message out, has vowed to hold rallies Monday, the first anti-government show of force in a month. It is not clear if the demonstrations will take place on university campuses or in the streets.
The call went out on dozens of Web sites run by supporters of opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, both of whom ran in the June 12 election. Most of those sites have been repeatedly blocked by the government, forcing activists to set up new ones.
Internet connections in the capital, Tehran, have been slow or completely down since Saturday. Blocking Internet access and cell phone service has been one of the routine methods employed by the authorities to undermine the opposition in recent months.
The government has not publicly acknowledged it is behind the outages, but Iran's Internet service providers say the problem is not on their end and is not a technical glitch. A day or two after the demonstrations, cell phone and Internet service is restored.
Former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has been a powerful voice of dissent from within the ranks of the Islamic leadership, accused Iran's hard-line rulers in comments reported Sunday of silencing any constructive criticism.
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