You’re telling me that a country run by crazed, overzealous theocrats would be loathe to let people have opinions that may vary from its “official” doctrines and act to put a stop to them? I’m glad I live in a place where church and state are (mostly) separate (at the time of this writing, anyway). Lara Sukhtian of the Associated Press (via The Seattle Post-Intelligencer) writes:
DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES – 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 blog 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…