Iranian Minister of Telecommunications and Information Technology Mohammad Soleimani said on Tuesday that there are as many as 63 million fixed and mobile phone users in Iran.
Addressing the Fourth International Seminar on Information and Telecommunications Security in Damascus, Soleimani said 27 percent of Iranian population are linked to internet.
Soleimani said 53 percent of Iranian villages are now connected to internet now.
Iran’s parliament is set to debate a draft bill which could see the death penalty used for those deemed to promote corruption, prostitution and apostasy on the Internet, reports said on Wednesday.
MPs on Wednesday voted to discuss as a priority the draft bill which seeks to “toughen punishment for harming mental security in society,” the ISNA news agency said.
The text lists a wide range of crimes such rape and armed robbery for which the death penalty is already applicable. The crime of apostasy (the act of leaving a religion, in this case Islam) is also already punishable by death.
However, the draft bill also includes “establishing weblogs and sites promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy”, which is a new addition to crimes punishable by death.
Those convicted of these crimes “should be punished as “mohareb’ (enemy of God) and “corrupt on the earth’,” the text says.
Under Iranian law the standard punishments for these two crimes are “hanging, amputation of the right hand and then the left foot as well as exile.”