VOA Amharic Broadcasts Jammed in Ethiopia

VOA Amharic Broadcasts Jammed in Ethiopia

Peter Heinlein | Addis Ababa04 March 2010

International shortwave radio monitors have confirmed that VOA broadcasts in the Amharic language are being jammed. Amharic is the main official language and the language of commerce in Ethiopia.

VOA representatives in Ethiopia have been received complaints from listeners about noise drowning out its Amharic Service broadcasts. People trying to tune in can hear occasional snippets of the VOA broadcast covered by a loud crackle.

The static began February 22 on all five VOA shortwave frequencies aimed at East Africa in the 25 and 31-meter shortwave bands.

The other foreign broadcast heard in Ethiopia, the German government's Deutsche Welle Amharic language program, also reports experiencing some interference, in the past few days.

Monitors say VOA transmissions in two other Ethiopian languages, Afan Oromo and Tigrinya, are being heard normally. They are broadcast on the same frequencies, before and after the hour-long Amharic program.

VOA and Deutsche Welle were jammed around the time of the last parliament election in 2005, and again before the 2008 nationwide local elections. The next crucial parliament vote is scheduled for May 23.

In 2008, the authoritative BBC monitoring service reported it was able to determine that the jamming signals originated from within Ethiopia. This time, however, no such determination has been made.

In a telephone interview, Ethiopian Communications Office spokesman Shimelis Kemal denied any government involvement in the jamming. "This is a baseless allegation. The government doesn't espouse a policy of restricting media outlets from disseminating their messages to Ethiopian audiences," he said.

Ethiopian officials have often described VOA's Amharic Service as the 'voice of the opposition', saying its broadcasts reveal an anti-government bias. Meleskachew Ameha, an Amharic Service reporter in Addis Ababa, was detained for two weeks, last year, in a case involving alleged possession of illegal broadcast equipment. He was released without charge.

Audience research in 2008 suggested about 11 percent of adult Ethiopians regularly tune in to VOA language service broadcasts.

Voice of America Director Danforth Austin issued a statement Wednesday saying, 'VOA deplores jamming and any other form of censorship of the media'.

The Voice of America is a multi-media international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. Government. VOA broadcasts more than 1,500 hours of news and other programming every week in 49 languages to an audience of more than 125 million people.

International broadcasters condemn illegal Iranian jamming of radio and television channels

International broadcasters condemn illegal Iranian jamming of radio and television channels

Date: 12.02.2010

Category: World Service

International broadcasters – BBC, Deutsche Welle, and Voice Of America - today issued a strong message of condemnation following a new wave of deliberate electronic interference by the Iranian authorities which is affecting their broadcasts. BBC World News – the English language channel - was the latest channel to be jammed this week.

The new wave of jamming occurred as Iranians marked the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution.

The jamming is affecting services on the Hotbird satellite which covers audiences across Europe and the Middle East. These include BBC Persian television, the Voice Of America television channel in Persian, the Radio Farda service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Deutsche Welle's television and radio services.

In a joint statement: Peter Horrocks, Director of BBC World Service, Erik Bettermann, Director of Deutsche Welle and Dan Austin, Director of Voice Of America said: "We condemn any jamming of these channels. It contravenes international agreements and is interfering with the free and open flow of international transmissions that are protected by international treaties.

"We call upon satellite operators and those who regulate them to take urgent action to put pressure on Iran to stop this activity. The Iranian authorities are using the same satellite services to broadcast freely around the world including broadcasts in English and Arabic; at the same time they are denying their own people programmes coming from the same satellites from the rest of the world.

"We will not stop broadcasting accurate and impartial news and current affairs into Iran. We will try every avenue to give our large audiences in Iran the television news services that they want.

"The jamming violates article 45 of the Constitution of the International Telecommunication Union that prohibits signal interference and we look to the international regulatory community to take a firmer stance on this deliberate act of jamming.

"Formal complaints have been submitted to the International Telecommunication Union, and other channels are being vigorously pursued to stop further jamming."

World Service Publicity

International broadcasters condemn Iran over 'jamming'

BBC Persian Television is one of the channels being jammed by Iran

Three major international broadcasters have strongly condemned Iran for its "deliberate electronic interference" in their broadcasts.

The BBC, Deutsche Welle and Voice of America said the jamming began on Thursday as Iran marked the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.

They said Iran was broadcasting freely around the world while denying its own people programmes coming from outside.

Earlier, the US accused Iran of using a "near-total information blockade".

A state department spokesman said there were strong indications that the telephone network had been taken down, SMS messages blocked, and internet communication "throttled".

"Iran has attempted a near total information blockade," PJ Crowley said.

We will not stop broadcasting accurate and impartial news and current affairs into Iran Joint statement by the BBC, Deutsche Welle and Voice of America In pictures: Iran revolution rallies Iran claims uranium 20% milestone John Leyne on cyber wars

"It is clear that the Iranian government fears its own people."

White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs meanwhile said that the web giant, Google, and other internet service providers had been "unplugged" in Iran.

Reporters Without Borders says the blocking of Google's Gmail e-mail system takes the drive to control cyber-space to a new stage.

But the organisation claims that most Iranian internet users know how to sidestep censorship and access blocked websites.

Correspondents say a number of governments - notably China and Burma, as well as Iran - make strenuous efforts to block modern internet communications among their opponents.

'Accurate and impartial'

The BBC, Deutsche Welle and Voice of America said the Iranian authorities' jamming was affecting services on the Hotbird satellite, which covers audiences across Europe and the Middle East.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a rally Iran was now a "nuclear state"

These include BBC Persian Television, the Voice of America Television Channel in Persian and Radio Farda; and Deutsche Welle's Television and Radio services. BBC World News - the English-language channel - was also jammed.

"We condemn any jamming of these channels. It contravenes international agreements and is interfering with the free and open flow of international transmissions that are protected by international treaties," the broadcasters said in a joint statement.

"The Iranian authorities are using the same satellite services to broadcast freely around the world including broadcasts in English and Arabic; at the same time they are denying their own people programmes coming from the same satellites from the rest of the world," they added.

Footage said to show a policeman beating a protester

On Thursday, a day-long security clampdown in the Iranian capital Tehran succeeded in preventing large-scale opposition protests as the nation commemorated the Islamic Revolution.

The opposition turnout was dwarfed by huge crowds at the state-run celebrations in the centre of Tehran.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the rally, saying Iran was now a "nuclear state" and had produced its first stock of 20% enriched uranium.

But the White House said the assertion was based more on politics than science.

01/8/10 05:34 PM ET

France Seeks ITU Help To Halt Satellite Signal Jamming by Iran

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By Peter B. de Selding

PARIS — French regulators have asked the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to intervene with the Iranian government to persuade Tehran to stop jamming satellite signals from the BBC World Service’s Persian-language broadcasts into Iran, according to the director of France’s National Frequencies Agency (ANF).

ANF Director Francois Rancy said the appeal to the ITU was made the first week of January only after numerous French requests to Iran to stop the interference went unanswered over the past seven months.

Rancy, a veteran international-frequency regulator who chaired the ITU’s World Radiocommunication Conference in late 2007, said that while he hoped ITU pressure would affect Iran’s behavior, he was not counting on an immediate stop to the practice.

“The ITU is really a gentlemen’s club,” Rancy said in a Jan. 5 interview. “It depends on the goodwill of its members. There is no mechanism for forcing an administration into compliance with the rules.”

The Geneva-based ITU is a United Nations affiliate that regulates satellite and other wireless communications frequencies and satellite orbital slots. In recent years it has regularly tried, without success, to get the U.S. government to stop jamming legal radio and television broadcasts from Cuba, which the ITU says is done with low-flying aircraft operating in international airspace.

In another example, Slovenian television broadcasters and the ITU have sought to stop Italian broadcasters from overstepping their frequency assignments with signal transmissions that interfere with Slovenian broadcasts. According to ITU documents, Slovenian regulators sent more than 200 reports to Italy citing interference, saying Italy was using frequencies that had not been coordinated with its neighbors.

In both these cases, the alleged offending administrations — the United States and Italy — have all but refused to acknowledge the ITU requests.

The BBC Persian programming carried on the Eutelsat Hot Bird 6 satellite stationed at 13 degrees east was jammed starting last spring during Iran’s elections, and it has continued intermittently ever since, particularly during the broadcaster’s coverage of the death of a reformist Iranian cleric.

An official with Paris-based Eutelsat acknowledged that locating the source of frequency interference is often difficult. But in this case, Eutelsat contacted other satellite operators to compare notes about broadcasts in the region and performed tests over an extended period of time, and concluded that the jamming signals were coming from Iranian territory.

The Eutelsat official said one way of determining whether interference is intentional or accidental is to move the affected programming to another transponder on the satellite to see whether the jamming then stops.

Once it is determined beyond a reasonable doubt that the interference was coming from Iran, Eutelsat contacted ANF, which then contacted Iran in multiple letters sent since mid-2009, Rancy said.

For the BBC, a solution to the problem is likely to involve using replacement capacity on Eutelsat satellites whose beams make it impossible for Iranian authorities to uplink interference to the satellite. The BBC in recent months has shifted its programming to Eutelsat capacity on the Telstar 12 satellite at 15 degrees west, a location that relieves the jamming but also makes it difficult for the BBC’s Iranian audience to capture the satellite’s downlink.

The British broadcaster has also used Eutelsat’s W2M satellite at 3.1 degrees west, which offers a better signal-reception angle for Iranian dish antennas but features a narrow beam whose uplink cannot be accessed from Iranian soil, the Eutelsat official said.

“There are no easy and definitive solutions,” the Eutelsat official said. “But when we can, we can move programming to a satellite whose location makes it impossible for jammers in a given location to target the satellite.”

BBC World Service did not respond to requests for comment about whether the use of other satellites will provide a permanent solution to the problem or whether the broadcast audience will be sharply reduced as viewers need to repoint their rooftop antennas to the new satellites.

In a Dec. 21 statement following a fresh round of Hot Bird 6 jamming that started Dec. 20, the broadcaster said: “The BBC is looking at ways to increase the options for its Farsi-speaking audiences in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, which may include broadcasting on other satellites.”

Broadcasting Board of Governors' Statement on Interference with Broadcasts to Iran

Press Release

Broadcasting Board of Governors' Statement on Interference with Broadcasts to Iran

December 29, 2009 | Washington, DC« Back to Press Releases

The Broadcasting Board of Governors condemns the latest efforts of the Iranian Government and its associates to interfere and censor the free flow of objective news and information to the Iranian people. By monitoring satellite signals, BBG's technical experts have determined that on December 27, the Government of Iran engaged in the intentional jamming of satellite transmissions of the Voice of America's (VOA) Persian News Network and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's (RFE/RL) Radio Farda.

These efforts continue a pattern by the Iranian Government to block the broadcasting of objective and balanced news and information to the Iranian people, efforts which the Government of Iran has amplified since the June 12 Iranian elections. As Iranian citizens once again demonstrate against the current government, Iran has stepped up its measures to ensure that the Iranian people are deprived of the international reaction, as well as of accurate news about the protests taking place in various cities in Iran.

The latest actions of the Iranian government in jamming commercial satellites appear calculated to intimidate the commercial satellite providers that are targets of the jamming into complicity with the actions of the Government of Iran and deprive the Iranian people access to free press and information.

"Private industry is an essential partner in freedom of the press. We urge our satellite partners to stand united in the face of these authoritarian acts or risk even greater human rights losses," BBG Governor D. Jeffrey Hirschberg said after the Iranian Government's latest efforts to jam U.S. International Broadcasting signals.

"This type of intentional, harmful interference is not only a violation of the rules of the International Telecommunications Union to which the Government of Iran has subscribed, but is also a flagrant violation of the internationally recognized right of the people of Iran to receive news and information without government censorship."

Calls to the Iranian Mission to the UN for comment have not been returned.

The BBG condemns censorship in any form and vigorously affirms the right of all peoples of the world to receive news and information freely and without restriction. The BBG also strongly urges satellite owners and service providers not to allow themselves to become unwitting instruments of censorship of the free press under the guise of avoiding harmful interference. The people of Iran, like the peoples of all countries, have the right to know about their country and the world.

Deutsche Welle latest target of Iranian jamming

January 3rd, 2010 - 12:06 UTC

by Andy Sennitt.

Following deliberate interference to Farsi broadcasts of the BBC, VOA and Radio Farda, Deutsche Welle (DW) is the latest international broadcaster to report deliberate jamming of its satellite signal in Iran, according to a report in news magazine Der Spiegel.

The report says that the French national radio regulatory agency Agence Nationale des Fréquences wrote to the Iranian Ministry of Communication saying that on December 7 and December 8 signals had been detected that looked like “deliberate interference” with the satellite used by DW.

The affected satellite was a Hotbird satellite belonging to Eutelsat. The satellite operator apparently reacted to the disturbance by increasing the broadcasting power, whereupon the disturbance signal was also strengthened, cutting out an Arabic language TV broadcast from DW.

The origin of the disturbance was traced to the area of Tehran. Similar disturbances coming from Iran were already detected by the French authority in May and June 2009.

(Source: The Local)

Iran jamming satellite signals from U.S. and British broadcasts

By Steven Zyan Kain Nickels.

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British and U.S. broadcasters say that Iran is jamming signals from a key communications satellite in an effort to keep news of opposition demonstrations from most Iranians.

U.S. and British broadcasters say that Iran is jamming signals from an international satellite that transmits signals into Iran from the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC's) Persian television service and the United States' Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts. The VOA is reporting that the jamming effort is affecting a satellite system known as "Hot Bird," and is blocking the transmission of broadcasts of the VOA's Persian Network and Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty's Radio Farda and Radio Sawa, an Arabic-language radio broadcast. Technicians believe the VOA broadcasts have been affected since December 27. The BBC's Persian television service first noticed "persistent interference" on December 20, according to a Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW) report. That was soon after the BBC network began extended coverage of the death of the reformist cleric Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri. The jamming efforts affected other channels on the satellite transponder as well, including R1 and Yes Italia. The jamming resulted in the signal being unwatchable due to "picture break-ups and sound drop-outs," according to RNW. To combat the jamming interference, RNW says the BBC began using an info card telling viewers to turn to Telstar 12 during the jamming. The BBC reports that now the jamming has appeared to have stopped for their broadcasts but they are looking at other satellites as a way to increase their broadcasts to Farsi-speaking Iranians. RNW said a statement issued by the U.S. government's Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) criticized the jamming and said,

As Iranian citizens once again demonstrate against the current government, Iran has stepped up its measures to ensure that the Iranian people are deprived of the international reaction, as well as of accurate news about the protests taking place in various cities in Iran.

It is widely accepted that Iran has the technical proficiency to disrupt a wide-range of communication networks, including broadcast, cell phone, satellite and Internet services within Iran.