EU urged to take measures against Iran's jamming of satellite transmissions

Britain, France and Germany urged the European Union to take action against Iran’s censorship capabilities with regards to jamming foreign broadcasts.

David Miliband, Bernard Kouchner and Guido Westerwelle, the British, French and German foreign ministers have called for restrictions on sale of technology to Iran that can be used for suppression and censorship of the media.

In a letter the three ministers maintain that the European Union needs to take swift action against the jamming of satellite networks of BBC and Deutsche Welle. The letter states that with such actions, Iran “clearly has the goal of preventing the Iranian population freely exercising its right to information.”

The three countries are calling on the 27 members of the EU for “equipment and technology that contribute to censorship and attacks on freedom of communication to be added to the list of goods that may not be exported to Iran.”

On Wednesday, the French company Eutelsat announced that in the past nine months it has lodged several complaints against Iran’s deliberate jamming operations of its transmissions with appropriate French authorities.

Eutetsat transmits BBC Persian and Voice of America in Persian from its satellites.

The latest complaints of Eutelsat has prompted the joint initiative taken by the French, British and German foreign Minters and will be given priority in the EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting on March 22.

The efforts were preceded with Shirin Ebadi’s condemnation of two European companies of selling telecommunications surveillance technology to Iranian government.

The Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate claimed that Germany’s Siemens and Finnish company, Nokia have been providing such equipment for Iran.

One of the main government strategies to put down the election protests against the alleged vote fraud that secured Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election has been to suppress media and communications by efforts ranging from arresting journalists, tapping phone calls, jamming satellite transmissions and filtering internet sites.