[LINK] another form of 'censorship'

[Jan Whitaker]

I guess we should be glad we don't live in Iran and post on the Internet!
Jan


http://www.mydd.com/story/2009/3/25/25442/7618
Iran Considers A Death Penalty for 'Offensive' Bloggers . . .

Al Jazeera's Nazanin Sadri reports.

     World-wide, the number of state-sanctioned executions almost 
doubled last year. A report by Amnesty International shows Iran, 
Saudi Arabia and China as being responsible for 90 per cent of all 
executions in 2008. Now, Iran is proposing a new law that could see 
the death sentence imposed on Internet bloggers who post offensive 
material on the web.

When in 2000 regular print outlets were censored by the mullahs, many 
Iranians turned to blogging. Over the past decade, Iran has blossomed 
into a nation of bloggers. It is estimated that there are some 46,000 
bloggers in the country.

Blogging in Iran is not without risk. Earlier this month, Iranian 
blogger Omid-Reza Mirsayafi was found dead in Tehran's Evin prison. 
He was serving a two and a half year sentence for allegedly 
"insulting Ayotollah Khomeini and the Supreme Leader Khamenei" and 
posting "seditious" materials on his blog.

If the President is going to reach out to the Islamic Republic, let 
him also tell the Iranian leadership that the United States and the 
West can never sanction a regime that so disparages human life and 
seeks to quash freedom of expression so egregiously.






Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

_ __________________ _