This should come as no suprise. But Iran is ramping up its campaign to shut up bloggers who don’t agree with the mainline government.
On his last visit to Iran, Canadian-based blogger Hossein Derakhshan was detained and interrogated, then forced to sign a letter of apology for his writings before being allowed to leave the country.
Compared to others, Derakhshan is lucky.
Dozens of Iranian bloggers have faced harassment by the government, been arrested for voicing opposing views, and fled the country in fear of prosecution over the past two years.
In the conservative Islamic Republic, where the government has vast control over newspapers and the airwaves, weblogs are one of the last bastions of free expression, where people can speak openly about everything from sex to the nuclear controversy.
But increasingly, they are coming under threat of censorship.
via Canada.com
Originally posted on March 29, 2006 @ 12:30 pm