Bangkok: Iranian demonstrators’ ability to get details of bloody nationwide protests out to the world has been given a strong boost, with SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service dropping its fees to allow more people to circumvent the Tehran government’s strongest attempt ever to prevent information from spilling outside its borders, activists said Wednesday.
The move by the American aerospace company run by Elon Musk follows the complete shutdown of telecommunications and internet access to Iran’s 85 million people on January 8, as protests expanded over the Islamic
Republic’s faltering economy and the collapse of its currency.
SpaceX has not officially announced the decision and did not respond to request for comment, but activists told
The Associated Press that Starlink has been available for free to anyone in Iran with the receivers since Tuesday.
“Starlink has been crucial,” said Mehdi Yahyanejad, an Iranian whose nonprofit Net Freedom Pioneers has
helped smuggle units into Iran, pointing to video that emerged Sunday showing rows of bodies at a forensic medical centre near Tehran.
“That showed a few hundred bodies on the ground, that came out because of Starlink,” he said in an interview from Los Angeles.
“I think that those videos from the centre pretty much changed everyone’s understanding of what’s happening because they saw it with their own eyes.”
Since the outbreak of demonstrations on December 28, the death toll has risen to
more than 2,500 people, primarily protesters but also security personnel, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.
Starlink is banned in Iran by telecommunication regulations, as the country never authorised the importation, sale or use of the devices.