Iran slows Internet access before student protests

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TEHRAN, (AP): 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 was not clear if the demonstrations would take place on university campuses or in the streets, but there was a visible increase in the number of police and other security personnel around Tehran University Sunday.
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.