Jailed For Blogging I Received This

Jailed for Blogging

I received this message from on an email network I subscribe to.

‘ Omid Memarian, Iranian writer and journalist, weblogger and social activist was arrested on Sunday. According to his brother, who provided a report to ISNA, Omid was arrested in his work place and then taken to his home, where his computer and hand written notes were also confiscated. Omid was mentioned in the editorial by Hossein Shariatmadari published in Keyhan, which accused western governments of supporting a web (or network) of Iranian reformist journalists and webloggers who are working to overthrow the regime. It is worth mentioning that many of those accused of political crimes in recent years have been arrested based on false allegations which first appeared in the ultra conservative daily Kayhan.

According to a report published by Rooydad Omid was arrested by the Office of Amaken (clandestine security police force). Three other journalists, also mentioned in this editorial, were arrested in the past month, including, Hanif Mazroi, Shahram Rafihzadeh and Rozbeh Mir Ebrahimi. Omid is the fourth journalist to be arrested in association with this false accusation by Kayhan. ‘

Please complain about this to the Iranian government via their interests section in Washington, DC or via the Iranian embassy if you have one in your country. I know it seems hopeless to complain, but I used to write Amnesty International letters to the Communist government of Czechoslovakia complaining about intellectual repression, and maybe that sort of activity wasn’t a waste of time in retrospect. I sometimes wonder where the apparatchik is now, who received them . . .