Free Lantern

• New York times has a report about the Iranian blogosphere entitled: “Iranian Blogosphere Tests Government’s Limits“. The article refers to a research done in Harvard’s Law school that mapped Iran’s online public (See the resulting map here). The research and the report are both interesting. I have also translated part of them to Persian in my Persian blog.
• It’s been five years. Five years of bloodshed and displacement. Five years of fear and dread, and for children aged five and younger, war is all they’ve known. Since April five years ago, more than 200,000 have died and more than 2.3 million people have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the conflict in this vast region to the west of Sudan. Tomorrow there will be the day for Darfur in the UK.

Yesterday was 8th of March, I read an article(Persian) by an Iranian women rights activist. She reminded me that during the last year in Iran, 100 women right activists spent at least 1 night in prison. What was their sin? They were demanding their rights using different Nonviolent methods, like gathering signatures. A friend of mine Farnaz, has been between one of those that spent time in prison. She has also written about how the so called police was searching inches of their house to find her last year on the 8th of March.
I also hope that there will be an International women’s day which we can just be happy of our achievements, which discrimination and violence are just bad past memories, like how my good friend Jadi has also described it (in Persian).

Today was the action day for Osanloo, a trade union activist (head of Bus driver’s Union of Tehran) that is in Evin prison for demanding his and his coworkers rights. This day was organized by International Transport Worker’s Federation.

If you want to know more of his story you can see here. In the rest of this post you can watch a video entitled “Freedom Will Come” which introduces Osanloo, his mission and the reason he has spent more time in prison than outside.

Read more »

Unfortunately only bad news are heard these days:
A Kurdish teacher has been sentenced to death. Authorities arrested Kamangar in Tehran in July 2006 and held him in various detention centers in Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and Tehran. Kamangar claims that during a period of detention in Unit 209 of Evin Prison in August 2006, officials tortured him to such an extent that they had to transfer him to the prison clinic to receive medical attention. Kamangar also alleges torture and ill-treatment while in detention in the cities of Sanandaj in Kurdistan province and Kermanshah.
The Iranian judiciary should revoke the death sentence of Kurdish teacher Farzad Kamangar, Human Rights Watch said today. (Read More)

The pressure on women rights activists is increasing as “The Feminist School“, a website organized by a group of Women Rights activists have been filtered inside Iran.

The Iranian government is relying on its broadly worded “security laws”
to suppress virtually any public expression of dissent, Human Rights
Watch said in a report released yesterday.
This 51-page report which is titled: “‘You Can Detain Anyone for Anything’: Iran’s Broadening Clampdown on Independent Activism,” documents the expansion in scope and number of the individuals and
activities persecuted by the Iranian government over the last two
years.
To read this report you can see here (PDF) or in Persian PDF.

Maz Jobrani is an Iranian-American comedian who alongside two other middle eastern-American comedians Ahmed Ahmed (Egyptian-American), Aron Kader (Palestinian-American), have made the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour. (occasionally Dean Obeidallah joins the group). The Tour started in November of 2005, and in case you don’t know it was named after George W.
Bush dubbing Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, as the “Axis of Evil”.You can go to their homepage and watch some videos they have online. In the following video, Maz Jobrani’s compares Iranians and Arabs.

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Photo: Arash Ashoorinia, Kosoof.com

Arash’s Photo says it all. This is one of the posters of Ahmadinejad’s campaign for the election a few years ago. It reads “Maximum comfort and Joy for all Iranian people”.
He just forgot to mention that by “All” he just meant those “All” that think the same as he does. The rest of the people are not included in “All”, so they don’t need any comfort, let alone the Joy!

Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.
Noam Chomsky

My good friend Jadi has written in his Persian weblog that the webpage of The world’s Aids day is filtered (censored) inside Iran! Isn’t that amazingly stupid? Jadi has a category in his page which is called Stupid Filtering where he introduces these kind of stupid censorship.

In a previous entry here I posted an Amnesty advertisement, I found another one while surfing in the internet which is also very interesting and effective, especially I guess it is interesting for people of my country, you’ll find out why when you go to the rest of this post:

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Reporters without border have released the world press freedom index of 2007, Iran has the place 166th place (out of 169). Something for Ahmadinejad to be proud of, as he claims people in Iran are enjoying the highest level of freedom! Meanwhile 3 students have been condemned to 7.5 years in prison together. Jadi has written what they’ve done wrong!

By Nikahang

Repression continues in China, one year before Olympic Games