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
