Mixed Moss

Check it out, yo!

To us here in the states, the right to blog represents merely the right to think others give a crap what goes on in our lives (I mean come on, to be a successful blogger you have to spend so much time blogging that we all know you haven’t got an real life. What’s interesting about that?), which implies the right to be rather egotistical and self-important.

But to Arash Sigarchi and Mojtaba Saminejad, bloggers in Iran, the right to blog represents the right to the freedom of speech, and (when arrested for espionage) the right to a fair and open trial. Read this article. If I didn’t already have a blog, it would make me want to get one! Support our brother bloggers in Iran! Post this on your blog! Spread the news to all your blogging friends!

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men (and women), including Iranian ones, are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator– whichever one they believe in– with certain inalienable rights; that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of blogging.”

Iran Jails Editor for 14 Years for Insulting Leaders
Tue Feb 22, 2005 02:06 PM ET

TEHRAN (Reuters) - 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.

“In total, he has been given 14 years in prison,” Mohammad Saifzadeh, a member of Center for Defense of Human Rights in Tehran told Reuters by telephone.

Sigarchi’s family has asked Saifzadeh and Iran’s 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi to represent him in an appeal.

“I have compiled almost 12 pages of wrongdoings in the process of his arrest, interrogations and detention,” Saifzadeh said. “His charges are political and journalistic and he should have been tried by a public court in the presence of a jury.”

Iran’s judiciary has closed down more than 100 liberal publications in the past five years and jailed many journalists, earning Iran the reputation as the biggest prison for journalists in the Middle East, according to rights groups.

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said Sigarchi had been updating a weblog in which he had spoken out about the arrest of more than 20 Internet journalists, technicians and webbloggers late last year.

Most of that group have subsequently been released, although several complained of being tortured and forced to write false confessions while in detention.

Global blogger action day called
By Jo Twist, BBC News science and technology reporter

The global web log community is being called into action to lend support to two imprisoned Iranian bloggers.
The month-old Committee to Protect Bloggers’ is asking those with blogs to dedicate their sites on Tuesday to the “Free Mojtaba and Arash Day”.

Arash Sigarchi and Mojtaba Saminejad are both in prison in Iran.

Blogs are free sites through which people publish thoughts and opinions. Iranian authorities have been clamping down on prominent sites for some time.

“I hope this day will focus people,” Curt Hopkins, director of the Committee, told the BBC News website.

If you have a blog, the least you could do is put nothing on that blog except ‘Free Mojtaba and Arash Day’
Curt Hopkins, Committee to Protect Bloggers

The group has a list of actions which it says bloggers can take, including writing to local Iranian embassies.
The Committee has deemed Tuesday “Free Mojtaba and Arash Day” as part of its first campaign.

It is calling on the blogsphere - the name for the worldwide community of bloggers - to do what it can to help raise awareness of the plight of Mojtaba and Arash as well as other “cyber-dissidents”.

Some blogs have already posted messages about the day, and some have downloaded the banner to mark it.

“If you have a blog, the least you could do is put nothing on that blog except ‘Free Mojtaba and Arash Day’,” said Mr Hopkins.

“That would mean you could see that phrase 7.1 million times. That alone will shine some light on the situation.

“If you don’t have one, find one dedicated to that - it takes about 30 seconds.”

Technorati, a blog search engine, tracks about six million blogs and says that more than 12,000 are added daily.

A blog is created every 5.8 seconds, according to a US research think-tank.

‘No man’s land’

The Committee to Protect Bloggers was started by US blogger Curt Hopkins and counts fired flight attendant blogger Ellen Simonetti as a deputy director.

She has since started the International Bloggers’ Bill of Rights, a global petition to protect bloggers at work.

Although not the only website committed to human rights issues by any means, it aims to be the hub or organisation, information and support for bloggers in particular and their rights to freedom of speech.

The Committee, although only a month old, aims to be the focal point for blogger action on similar issues in the future, and will operate as a non-for-profit organisation.
“Blogging is in this weird no man’s land. People think of it as being one thing or another depending on their point of view,” said Mr Hopkins.

“Some think of themselves as pundits, kind of like journalists, and some like me have a private blog which is just a publishing platform.

“But they do not have a constituency and are out there in the cold.”

‘Everyone doing it’

A spokesman for Amnesty International said: “Just as the internet is a tool for freedom, so it is being used as an excuse for repression.

“Amnesty International has recorded a growing number of cases of people detained or imprisoned for disseminating their beliefs or information through the internet, in countries such as China, Syria, Vietnam, the Maldives, Cuba, Iran and Zimbabwe.

“It is also shocking to realise that in the communications age just expressing support for an internet activist is enough to land people in jail.”

It is not just human rights issues in countries which have a track record of restricting what is published in the media that is of concern to bloggers.

The question of bloggers and what rights they have to say what they want on their sites is a thorny one and has received much press attention recently.

High profile cases in which employees have been sacked for what they have said on their personal, and often anonymous blogs, have highlighted the muddy situation that the blogsphere is currently in.

Everyone does this - mums, radicals, conservatives
Curt Hopkins, Committee to Protect Bloggers

“This is a big messy argument,” explained Mr Hopkins.

He added: “It is just such a new way of doing business, there will be clamp downs.”

But the way these issues get tested is through the courts which, said Mr Hopkins, “is part of the whole messy conversation.”

“If you haven’t already got bloggers in your company, you will have them tomorrow - and if you don’t have a blogger policy now you had better start looking at having one.

Mr Hopkins said that the blogsphere - which is doubling every five months - was powerful because it takes so little time and expertise to create a blog.

“Everyone does this - mums, radicals, conservatives,” he said.

Many companies offer easy-to-use services to create a blog and publish it in minutes to a global community.

“That is the essential difference. What I call ‘templating software’ gives every single person on Earth the chance to have one.

“You don’t even have to have your own computer.”

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/4278241.stm

Published: 2005/02/22 09:07:42 GMT

© BBC MMV

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