Iranian Bloggers Beware

This week the Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan known at the Blogfather of Iran, who blogged at Hoder.com (offline at the time of publishing) has been sentenced to 19.5 years in jail.  Many accusations have been made against Derakhshan - including espionage - and I certainly do not know all the details of the case, but it is beyond doubt that part of the reason why he was arrested is because he was a blogger. Bloggers in Iran have routinely been arrested and questioned in the past.

Hoder was one of the first blogs to discuss Iranian politics and issues, but many others have been targeted by authorities. One prominent case was that of Sina Motallebi who was arrested and imprisoned in 2003 because of the content of his blog. He was released after 23 days after international uproar from the blogosphere.

Blogs by their very nature are not edited before publishing, unlike state-controlled mass media. In a country like Iran they have the greatest significance as perhaps the only real way to communicate with the world: they make reporting possible when even international journalists are banned. This allows people outside of Iran to gain a more accurate portrayal of what was happening inside the country, thus a loss of one Iranian blogger, or “free-speaker” if you will, is a real shame.