Crackdown on bloggers and academics in Iran
CM details the recent crackdown on Iranian bloggers Kian and Ali. Also U.S. Middle East analyst Haleh Esfandiari has been imprisoned by Iranian authorities.
Mere speech against some injustice, against some regime of intolerance or hypocrisy, for some right, for some freedom is considered dangerous, radioactive and inimical by totaliarianian agendas. Such speech normally resulted in the state condemning and imprisoning the speaker and swiftly creating an apporpriate counter-narrative for the publics [Faiz is in prison because he is a hedonistic commie who hates Allah!]. Speech silenced, injustice obscured, the machinery hummed along barely noticing the press releases or annual reports issued by the good people at Amnesty or Human Rights Watch - the world rather inattentive.
And while such speech still results in imprisonment, those times of inattention are now largely over. The crackdown on bloggers and websites in Iran, Pakistan or China is motivated by the state’s panic at the rapid rate of dissemination of facts and stories the state would rather keep locked up in high-security prisons. The web coverage catapults not only international attention by goverments and organizations - all those letters received and laborious visits to consulates - but more significantly, national attention. That quickly created counter-narrative can’t bear any scrutiny and even state-owned press would rather report on the latest dam-building effort on the River than spin the news that is now on BBC.
Mere speech against some injustice, against some regime of intolerance or hypocrisy, for some right, for some freedom is considered dangerous, radioactive and inimical by totaliarianian agendas. Such speech normally resulted in the state condemning and imprisoning the speaker and swiftly creating an apporpriate counter-narrative for the publics [Faiz is in prison because he is a hedonistic commie who hates Allah!]. Speech silenced, injustice obscured, the machinery hummed along barely noticing the press releases or annual reports issued by the good people at Amnesty or Human Rights Watch - the world rather inattentive.
And while such speech still results in imprisonment, those times of inattention are now largely over. The crackdown on bloggers and websites in Iran, Pakistan or China is motivated by the state’s panic at the rapid rate of dissemination of facts and stories the state would rather keep locked up in high-security prisons. The web coverage catapults not only international attention by goverments and organizations - all those letters received and laborious visits to consulates - but more significantly, national attention. That quickly created counter-narrative can’t bear any scrutiny and even state-owned press would rather report on the latest dam-building effort on the River than spin the news that is now on BBC.
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