PRESS: Iran shuts access to global Web site of Russia’s Yandex

MOSCOW, Mar 17 (PRIME) -- Iran has blocked yandex.com, an international Web site of Russian Internet giant Yandex, as it gave an opportunity to find information contradicting Islamic values, but Russia can raise the matter in May during a visit of First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov to Tehran, business daily Kommersant reported Thursday.

The yandex.com resource opens access to Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Kazakh and Turkish Web sites of Yandex. Regional resources, including yandex.ru, are still available in Iran.

“The Iranian side thinks that (the blocked resource) contains information failing to comply with their values. However, yandex.ru works,” Maxim Suslov, press attache of the Russian embassy in Iran, told the daily.

The bulk of Web sites, including Russian ones, are not in sync with Islamic values. “There is a special service that monitors Web sites; it decides to block this or that resource,” Suslov said.

Iran earlier closed access to social networks Facebook, Twitter and VKontakte. “Many citizens actively use VPN-servers and bypass the filter,” he said.

A Yandex spokesperson said that the company does not have any proof that blocking was centralized. “Besides, it’s not the market of our priority,” the spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for VKontakte confirmed the restricted access to the social network in Iran.

Russian Internet companies are interested in returning to the matter of blocking Web resources in Iran. “We’ve already written letters to the embassy of Iran and the Iranian regulator of telecommunications and connection. Moreover, we expect the matter to be raised during a visit of First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov to Iran,” a source close to one of the companies said.

Shuvalov could visit Iran in May, a federal official told the daily. The deputy prime minister would unlikely discuss the matter directly, but could talk about it on the sidelines, the source said.

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