Iran

Fire of Liberty

The mad Mullahs of Iran are up to their old tricks again by going after the bloggers. Like a true totalitarian regime, the Mullahs have to continue to control its people by clamping down on all forms of dissent. One area that the Iranian government has been concentrating on is free press. In 2000, countless newspapers were shut down because they didn't toe the government line. Without a media to communicate such dissent, the people were forced into the blogosphere, which according to the BBC, there a some 46,000 Iranians blogging on freedom, democracy and countless other subjects in the ancient Persian nation. What seems to have set the Mullahs into this massive crack-down is that the growing democracy movement in Iran, which consist of tech-savvy 20 year olds, have mastered the net and are getting their message out to the World and fellow Iranians. The mullahs have begun a campaign of silencing the bloggers by placing them in jail for long stretches of time with excessive bonds and Lord knows what else. Take for instance the bloggers Arash Sigarchi and Mojtaba Saminejad, both of which were locked into Iran's shoddy prisons just because the practiced their rights of Free Speech. Here's what the BBC had to say about these two:

The Iranian government has not said explicitly that it is blogging that got Mr Sigarchi and Mr Saminejad into trouble.

However, both have used their blogs in the past to criticize the detention of other Iranian webloggers.

Iranian-born Hadi Ghaemi is following both cases for Human Rights Watch in New York.

"Major charges against Sigarchi included him giving interview to foreign radio, which is completely a violation of his right to free speech and expression," Mr Ghaemi says.

"He's being kept in a prison in the city of Rasht, which is his hometown in northern Iran. Bail for his release has been set at $200,000."

Mojtaba Saminejad has not fared much better, according to Mr Ghaemi.

"Saminejad was kept in solitary confinement for 88 days, and he was subjected to severe beatings and torture. He was briefly released on 27 January for a short time, but because bail had been set at $125,000, and he wasn't able to pay that, he was rearrested, and his conditions are unknown."

I bid my fellow bloggers in Iran and the other "Outposts of Tyranny" good fortune and hope they outlast their oppressors. Look to the Fire of Liberty to guide you through the storm of tyranny.