PRISONERS OF IRAN

THIS PAGE IS DEDICATED TO PRISONERS OF IRAN

Iran has been a country of political prisoners for a long time from the time of Shah's dictatorship to the dictatorships of Khomeini and now Khamenei. This regime has always been very brutal toward political prisoners, from the 1988 executions of political prisoners in Iran to the 2009 abuse, torture and killings of political prisoners in Kahrizak and Evin. The number of prisoners has increased very rapidly since the 2009 presidential election. I am proud that we have so many intellectuals, human right activists, reformists, thinkers, and journalists inside and outside Iran. Because of censorships and brutality of the regime, writing the complete list of prisoners is an impossible task. The Guardian has done an outstanding job in collecting and publishing a list of 1259 of missing in Iran (see Iran's dead and detained) as of January 8, 2010. You can download the list into a spreadsheet. It would be nice if we could keep the list updated. We should create a page for each of the prisoners on Wikipedia or other sites. I will update and add to the following list regularly.

 

You can see the rest of this post in my page "PRISONERS OF IRAN"

Ahmad Zeidabadi Won the 2011 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize

Iranian journalist Ahmad Zeidabadi  won the 2011 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. He is also the winner of World Association of Newspapers' Golden Pen of Freedom Award for 2010. Announcing the UNESCO decision, jury president Diana Senghor said: “ The final choice of Ahmad Zeidabadi pays a tribute to his exceptional courage, resistance and commitment to freedom of expression, democracy, human rights, tolerance, and humanity. Beyond him, also the Prize will award the numerous Iranian journalists who are currently jailed.” Zeidabadi is currently serving a six-year jail sentence following Iran’s presidential election in 2009.

In honour of our political prisoners, I would like to write the names of these courageous people here, with some information about each of them and a link to any possible online petition requesting their release. I have started the list, see Prisoners of Iran's page.  It will be a long list and I need your help to make the list more complete.