The Iranians are protesting against the removal of their applications by Apple

News 26 August, 2017
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    AFP

    Saturday, 26 August 2017 03:55

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    Saturday, 26 August 2017 03:55

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    TEHRAN, Iran-many Iranians, including the minister of Telecommunications, were protesting on Saturday against the removal of a dozen applications among the most important manufactured and used in Iran by the online store of the american giant of Apple technology.

    “Respect for the right of users is a basic principle that Apple has not complied with”, has tweetté Javad Azari Jahromi, iran’s minister of Telecommunications, at the age of 36 years.

    “Information technology must be used to make people’s lives better and more comfortable, and not as a means of discrimination between countries,” he added, promising “legal action” in this case.

    On social networks, the hashtag in English “StopRemovingIranianApps” was in vogue these days in Iran.

    According to the iranian media, Apple stated that these applications were no longer accessible on its online store Apple store because of the us sanctions against Iran.

    Although the United States has lifted part of sanctions against the islamic Republic after an agreement by 2015 on limiting its nuclear program, they continue to apply restrictions in this country for other reasons.

    “Apple has not provided an answer clear to our requests,” said the government daily Iran Daily, Mehdi Taghizadeh, one of the patrons of Delion, a company that delivers meals using the internet and the application of which has been removed from the online store of Apple.

    The most popular applications controlled are Digikala and Bamilo, two companies of sale by internet of the same gender as you, Amazon, as well as those of Snapp and Tap30, two taxi companies type Uber, or Delion.

    Iran has 40 million smartphones, of which six million Iphones, a model created by Apple, for a population of 80 million inhabitants.

    Apple has no representation in Iran, and the majority of its products arrive in the country by contraband. However, the government has elected several companies authorized to import legally Apple products in Iran.

    The decision of the american society affects not only the companies but also the developers.

    “The removal of the apps in iran is not fair, we are developers, like all other developers around the world,” protested Atena a young developer in a tweet.

    “#Apple removes apps from people who have twenty years and were full of hope under the pretext of sanctions”, has tweeted for his part, Parsa Janbaz.

    A petition launched on Twitter to ask Apple boss Tim Cook to abandon the deletion of the applications, the iranian has already collected over 4,600 signatures in two days (#StopRemovingIranianApps).

    “We are asking Mr. Cook to acknowledge our rights as a customer of Apple,” wrote Farzad Khandan, a consultant of iran in computer science living in Canada.

    Most of the applications produced in Iran have been registered in another country, including Canada to circumvent us sanctions.