Paying The Price For Blogging In Iran

11 posted on December 11, 2008

POSTED IN: Blog Posts, Blogging, Social Justice

We often take the most basic of our freedoms for granted. Take blogging for example. Anyone can set up a Wordpress account and in just a few minutes start writing about anything. Within just a couple of months you can even have hundreds of subscribers.

But what if your blog resulted in torture and imprisonment?

Mojtaba Saminejad, an Iranian blogger, was kept in solitary confinement for 88 days and 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. – BBC News Article

Blogging in Iran operates under special circumstances because the government restricts certain views. Blogs in general tend to be unregulated compared to other forms of expression in Iranian society. As of October 2005, there are estimated to be about 700,000 Iranian blogs making Iran the 3rd largest country of bloggers.

Iran: A nation of bloggers from Mr.Aaron on Vimeo.

Take a moment to thank God for the freedoms we have in this country and pray for those around the world who pay for their dissent with torture, imprisonment and sometimes death.

Pray that God will hear the cries of the oppressed and bring justice.

How terrible it will be for those who make unfair laws, and those who write laws that make life hard for people. They are not fair to the poor, and they rob my people of their rights.

(Isaiah 10:1)

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 11th, 2008 at 6:49 am and is filed under Blog Posts, Blogging, Social Justice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Comments

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1 Pete Wilson said:

Wow!
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2 Joseph said:

This is crazy!

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3 Bunk said:

Isaiah 10:1 Seriously hits the nail of this situation right on the head. This shows that even the internet ,which we think can be roamed aroud freely by all, has its governing bodies and boundaries/lines drawn.

One cannot help but have respect for Iranian bloggers, considering the harsh rammifications they might face for saying or typing even one wrong word.
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4 Zach Younkin said:

Wow!

As I sit here contemplating what to write for my blog, I can’t even think about being put in prison for my blog. Crazy!

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5 Laura Carney said:

Wow…another thing to be thankful for in America. We are still so blessed, even despite hard times.

Speaking of hard times (it’s a whole long story), Dan is looking for jobs, and guess what came up today? A job in Carmel, IN . We are excited to look into it…you guys haven’t been praying for friends, have you?!

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