Free Sina Motallebi
: A few notes on the jailed Iranian blogger:
: His weblog is no longer available; it’s just blank. (Here it is in the Google cache.)
: You can sign a petition addressed to various dignitaries on his behalf here.
: Here’s a banner in support of Motallebi created by another blogger, who is not posting it on his site because of a family connection in Iran. So I’m posting it here. Feel free to use it.
: Hossein Derakhshan, aka hoder, the blogger behind Editor: Myself, broke this news. Here’s his latest report:
More bad news are coming these days in Iran: daily paper, “Arya”, which was to be re-published is banned; some other young female reporters (including Masoumeh “Masih” Alinejad) are in court, and many others that I can’t remember now. Seems to me that hard-liners have started a new wave of pressure and this time they are targeting young journalists and activists.
: See also this piece about the impact of weblogs on Iran by hoder:
During the past 20 months, more than 10,000 Persian weblogs have been emerged. Their authors mostly live in Iran, where the number of Internet users hardly exceeds a half million….The popularity of weblogs among young Iranians, suggests that great changes has happened in Iranian society during the past two decades, at least among the new generations of middle-class residents of big cities…. Individuality, self-expression, tolerance are new values which are quite obvious through a quick study of the content of Persian weblogs….
: They have provided first-hand reports from several events such as students protests;
: they have helped young people find new dates or know more about potential dates, in lack of legitimate dating services;
: they have helped parents to get to know more about their children
