Update on Hossein

I feel at odds with myself about the past month. Although I was among those who rejected Hossein when his tone changed a while back, the news of his arrest really shocked me. During his early blogging career I emotionally "adopted" him. I loved his dare-devil attitude, but not the least, I liked the fact that he shared my concern about the state of Israel, which is slowly strangled politically by a mix of well moneyed propaganda and still prevailing old fashioned anti-semitic attitudes. He, like me, was ready to find things out for himself, in person.

When his writings started to exhibit an oddly different attitude, I also got annoyed and dropped him from my blog roll list. Yet, I soon started to wonder what may have brought the change about. My guesses were that he may have been intimidated by Iran (hard to believe), or that the harassment of a family member may have been used as an "incentive" for a change of tone. The change was too sharp for me to accept as a natural change of heart.

And then came the news of his arrest. To this day I don't know what to think. First of all I do not understand why he dared make that visit to Iran. He knew full well that his Israeli trip put him in a very precarious position. But putting that together with his cloak turning, my humble guess is that he may have been given reassurances from somewhere high up in Iran that if he "repents" in public and becomes more supportive of the present Iranian regime, things would be forgiven. Although this presumption sounds plausible, I still cannot believe Hossein could have been naive enough to fall for it.

So why did he go? Was he that stupidly daring to actually want to be arrested, so as to become a "cause célèbre" as a challenge? There must be something else...

In this past month, since I found out about his arrest, there was hardly a day that he wasn't on my mind. I imagined him being tortured, fearing that he might "confess" to spying for Israel like Ali Ashtari, the innocent electronics salesman, who was then publicly hanged last November. I imagined the anguish of his family! And then I fussed about my own choices, of never "having the time" to further my research on this matter, for accepting my daily life issues as more important than lobbying for a captive fellow Canadian. Hossein, if you ever get the chance to read this, know that I feel embarrassed, and that I apologize for myself and in the name of the many other procrastinators. I promise to do better from now on!

Luckily others have not been so slack. Here is a petition that can be signed.

Of course, Hossein is not the only one in this situation. There is the case of the journalist Roxana Saberi, also half Canadian who, according to the latest news, faces "life in prison". And then there are who knows how many people in Iran facing or already serving similar jail sentences. Students from the Amir Kabir University, or the 19 year old Alireza Firouzi, we even know of one who died recently while serving a 30 month sentence: Omidreza Mirsayafi.

Iran is not the only country repressing blogging, although it holds the title of being the worst. There is a long list of countries that do the same. We do need to raise awareness of these attacks on free speech. Let us start then with freeing Hossein Derakshan!