To the barricades, bloggers
: The Committee to Protect Bloggers is urging support from all bloggers on Feb. 22 — today — to bring international attention to the plight of two bloggers, Arash Sigarchi and Mojtaba Saminejad, jailed in Iran. Here’s a BBC story.
I first discovered the Iranian blog culture when its Johnny Appleseed, Hossein Derakhshan, reported on the arrest of blogger Sina Motallebi. We blogged about that and brought international attention to the story and Sina credits that with helping to get him out of jail and out of the country.
These people are in jail for doing exactly what we have the privilege of doing: Speaking. We must stand with them.
So please link to the Committee to Protect Bloggers and please bring attention to what his happening to our colleagues in Iran.
: UPDATE: Reuters has a story about the conviction and sentencing of an Iranian blogger:
An Iranian journalist was jailed for 14 years on charges ranging from espionage to insulting the country’s leaders in an unusually heavy sentence in Iran, where tens of journalists have been tried in recent years.
Rights activists said on Tuesday that Arash Sigarchi, 28, was convicted by the Revolutionary Court in the Caspian province of Gilan in northern Iran.
Sigarchi, a newspaper editor in Gilan who also wrote an Internet journal or “weblog,” was arrested last month after responding to a summons from the Intelligence Ministry.
