Documenting Censorship: Farsi/Dari SRHR Voices

Repro Uncensored x Soudeh Rad (Spectrum)

About the Work and SRHR Context

Soudeh Rad is the Executive Director of Spectrum, a queer-feminist nonprofit grounded in the values of love, fairness, and equality. The organization is anti-racist, intersectional, and inclusive of trans and gender-diverse individuals. As a diasporic group working with Farsi and Dari-speaking communities inside and outside Iran and Afghanistan, Spectrum focuses on awareness raising, knowledge-based activism, and advocacy for freedom and equality.

The primary challenge facing these communities is that anti-rights and anti-SRHR forces are in power in both countries. This not only strips people of access to their rights but also cuts them off from the information they need to understand those rights.

International actors often overlook or misunderstand this reality. Both Iran and Afghanistan are frequently sidelined in global conversations. Even after the Taliban’s documented acts of sexual and gender-based violence against women and LGBTQIA+ people, attention remains limited. Cultural relativism only deepens the problem by implying that local populations accept or endorse these laws, rather than recognizing them as politically and ideologically imposed.

The Nature of the Censorship in Frasi:

Soudeh notes that censorship in this context is primarily engineered by the Iranian government, not Big Tech.

Iran scores 12 out of 100 in Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net report and is labeled "Not Free." Censorship in Iran occurs across three key areas: obstacles to access, limits on content, and violations of user rights. Websites and applications are frequently banned. Simultaneously, international technological boycotts affect what users inside the country can access and how.

Evidence of state involvement includes phishing through social engineering, coordinated threats, mass spamming in comments and messages, and calls to report accounts. These attacks follow specific patterns and are linked to the Iranian Cyber Army, a state-aligned group of hackers.

Any website in Farsi that does not align with the regime’s values is quickly banned. This includes all of Spectrum’s websites, which are only accessible through VPNs. For Soudeh, the moment a page is banned is confirmation that their work is on the right side of the fight for equality and freedom.

The censorship is not only technical. In one case, our application Hamdam, a period tracker with built-in information on sexual health and rights in Iran, family laws, and how one can get a less discriminatory marriage contract, faced huge success.  The Iranian regime came up with an idea to copy the name and the logo to introduce a new app. Only, their Hamdam, is a matchmaker to promote marriage, following their pro-natalist politics. While Spectrum’s Hamdam is advocating for one’s agency over their body and life, Regime’s Hamdam is facilitating a bedding for systematic SGBV.

Platform Neglect and Harm

Farsi and Dari are marginalized languages on Big Tech platforms. As a result, these platforms often neglect or mishandle content moderation.

Content is regularly taken down or restricted without explanation. While responses can vary based on who is managing content at a given time (for example, during the 2022 "Woman, Life, Freedom" uprisings, content faced fewer restrictions), there is rarely a clear appeals process or justification.

Algorithms also fail to protect users. Soudeh recounts how, after facing mass harassment on Twitter, they spent hours reporting tweets containing insults, defamation, and death threats. Twitter’s only response came days later, and in Arabic, not Farsi, despite the algorithm’s supposed sophistication. These failures left them feeling isolated and silenced, altering the way they engaged in online activism.

When platforms fail to moderate abuse or provide support, authoritarian regimes benefit. In Soudeh’s case, Twitter’s inaction enabled state-aligned harassment and weakened her ability to speak out.

What Gets Flagged?

Visual SRHR content is often flagged regardless of language. Drawings of external reproductive organs—used for education and clarity—are frequently banned. Even when captions clearly state that the images are not pornographic but educational (such as in posts about Kegel exercises), content is removed without recourse.

Common labels used to censor content include “explicit.” Posts may also attract harmful misinformation in comments, such as “this is an invitation to kill a child” or “these contraceptives are harming us.”

Visual content is flagged more often than text. Over time, Spectrum has learned to self-censor visuals, even adding stickers to medical diagrams. For example, in a post about breast cancer self-examinations, they explained why stickers were used to cover nipples to also raise awareness on Big Tech censorship.

Collective Impact

Other SRHR organizations face similar restrictions. Those working inside Iran or Afghanistan often reframe their work under euphemisms like “motherhood health care” to comply with religious law. In the diaspora, activists depend on user ingenuity to bypass censorship and surveillance, often using platforms like Instagram or Telegram that are less tightly restricted in Iran.

However, this still has major consequences. Suppression directly impacts reach, credibility, and access to care. Silencing SRHR voices, whether through online censorship or public media control. erodes the entire advocacy infrastructure. When tech platforms align with or ignore state pressure, the consequences can be devastating for community outreach, education, and access.

What Real Support Could Look Like

According to Soudeh, platforms must develop a deeper understanding of SRHR and human rights. While these companies are primarily profit-driven and based in capitalist economies, they have a responsibility to consider the human impact of their systems.

There are not a lot of funders open to funding Iran-related projects, due to politics and sanctions but the the small pool of funders also have a role to play. They must stop using social media metrics as the sole measure of success for SRHR projects. Few funders support SRHR efforts that do not involve direct service provision, and even fewer fund Farsi-language initiatives.

For long-term sustainability and protection, Soudeh emphasizes the need for collaboration among SRHR activists across regions. Anti-rights movements are not only well-funded but well-organized. Activists must be equally coordinated. Sharing knowledge and strategies strengthens collective resistance to systematic violations and, ultimately, saves lives.

How You Can Support

The silencing of Farsi and Dari-speaking SRHR voices is not just a local issue. It is a global injustice that demands collective action. Here are concrete ways to support this work:

• Share and Amplify
  Follow and uplift the work of activists and organizations like Spectrum. Visibility protects. Share their content during key moments of repression or mobilization. You can learn more at feministspectrum.org.

• Fund Beyond Metrics
  If you are a donor or part of a funding institution, move away from social media engagement as the only measure of impact. Support knowledge-based activism, language justice, and advocacy, especially when not tied to direct service delivery.

• Hold Platforms Accountable
  Demand transparent, multilingual content moderation. Report censorship and harassment. Push tech companies to implement human rights-informed governance practices that protect activists. Report cenroship via www.reprouncensored.org/report-incident

• Support Circumvention and Safety Tools
  Back the development of censorship-resistant tools, VPNs, and secure communication platforms that are essential in repressive contexts.

• Build Transnational Solidarity
  Connect with SRHR defenders across regions. Share strategies. Learn from each other. Authoritarian and anti-rights movements are global and well-funded. Our resistance must be equally organized and resourced.

• Support Language Inclusion
  Advocate for content in marginalized languages like Farsi and Dari. Access to information should not be a privilege limited to dominant languages.

For more, visit reprouncensored.org and feministspectrum.org.