The freedoms we take for granted
October 15th, 2004
Iranian bloggers have been arrested for dissent for having “illegal internet sites”:
Six online journalists and webloggers have been arrested in Iran recently in a crackdown on dissent on the internet.
“People charged for having illegal internet sites… will be put on trial soon,” said a judiciary spokesman.
The trials would be “open” and charges included “acting against national security, disturbing the public mind and insulting sanctities”.
Web journals flourish in Iran where the youthful, reform-hungry population has gone online for news and entertainment.
The popularity of the internet has grown as hardline judges closed about 100 printed publications since 2000.
These six will probably be held up as examples and handed some frightening sentence… all for the crime of speaking freely against the repressions of the government.
But of course, everyone knows that it’s Israel that is the real problem in the Middle East…
(Via Damian Penny, who astutely describes this as “thoughtcrime”).
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