Iranian Blogger Sentenced to Prison

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Sunday, 27 February 2005

Iranian Blogger Sentenced to Prison

This sad and troubling news story reminds us not to take our freedom of expression for granted. I am referring to the 14 year prison sentence that the Iranian government gave to the blogger Arash Cigarchi. I know that many of you will join me in expressing solidarity for this brave writer. The story below is from the Human Rights Watch website. You can support groups like this to raise our voices against such actions. If anyone knows of other support efforts to help out in this situation, or in those of other bloggers in trouble for what they write, you can post them in the comments:

Iran: Blogger Sentenced to 14 Years in Prison: Government Broadens Its Crackdown on Freedom of Expression

(New York, February 24, 2005)--The Iranian government sentenced the prominent blogger Arash Cigarchi to 14 years in prison for expressing his opinions on the Internet and in the international press, marking a new low for freedom of expression in Iran, Human Rights Watch said today.
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Visit the Committee to Protect Bloggers website...

posted by: howard at 14:58 | link | comments (3) |

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Comments:

#1 27 February 2005 - 17:50

Howard: Are you familiar with The Committee To Protect Bloggers? mo'Time and mo'Timers should give them their complete support.

Jheka

#2 27 February 2005 - 18:07

Thank you, Jheka, I hadn't heard of this group. I recommend that site to anyone who cares about this issue. I just learned that, in addition to Cigharki, the Tehran government has also jailed another blogger, Mojtaba Saminejad.

It seems appropriate that those of us involved in blogging take particular interest in the rights of bloggers all around the world. Blogging software in general, and hosted community sites like mo'time in particular, are the most powerful publishing platforms in human history when you consider how many people around the world have access to the Internet. All it takes is a token or coin in an Internet cafe, or a free computer in a university library, and people can express themselves to literally millions of other Earthlings around the planet.

Let's not take it for granted.

howard

#3 28 February 2005 - 03:40

im getting scared of this... =(

suddenly everybody is interested with our blogs, our thoughts and our comments...

so does this mean we should really, really screen what we want to say in our blogs?