This is the official website of Roxana Saberi, a journalist, author, speaker, and human rights advocate. Her book Between Two Worlds tells the story of her 2009 arrest and captivity in Iran.
With high school teachers from the Denver area (Photo by Kit Hedman)
After my talk (Photo by Kit Hedman)
Signing books after my talk (Photo by Kit Hedman)
For more information on Facing History and Ourselves, please check here.
I’m honored to be invited to give the undergraduate commencement speech at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth on May 27.
Roxana Saberi, a journalist and human rights activist, is the undergraduate commencement speaker and Susan Avery, an oceanographic institution president, the graduate speaker for the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth this year.
The graduation ceremonies — scheduled for Saturday, May 26, for graduates and Sunday, May 27, for undergraduates — will also include distinguished service medals for retiring U.S. Rep. Barney Frank and Elizabeth O’Neill LaStaiti, a retired first justice of the Bristol County Probate and Family Court. Honorary doctorates will be given to Avery, social justice advocate Hubert Jones and New England Patriots radio play-by-play broadcaster Gil Santos.
Both ceremonies will be held at the Vietnam Veterans Peace Memorial Amphitheater next to the Claire T. Carney Library. In case of rain, the ceremonies will be held in a 5,600-seat tent adjacent to the amphitheater.
The undergraduate ceremony, which will begin at 10:15 a.m., will feature a speech by Saberi, a reporter turned social justice and human rights activist who was jailed in Tehran, Iran, in 2009. An estimated 1,550 students will receive their bachelor’s degrees this year.
The graduate ceremony, which will begin at 2:30 p.m., will feature a speech by Avery, the president and director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She has headed the institution since 2008 and is its first woman director. An estimated 325 students will receive master’s and doctoral degrees.
The honorees in both ceremonies have local ties.
Frank, who has been in Congress since 1980, represents Dartmouth and many surrounding communities.
LaStaiti, who retired last year from Bristol County court, is a trustee for SouthCoast Health Systems, and used to be the director of the Schwartz Center and a trustee of what is now the UMass School of Law.
Santos was born in Acushnet, grew up in Fairhaven and worked for radio stations in Fall River and New Bedford before joining WBZ in Boston in 1971.
Email Grant Welker at gwelker@heraldnews.com.
Reporters Without Borders
(In Farsi)
May 10, 2012
Reporters Without Borders firmly condemns the range of methods that the Iranian authorities use to keep intensifying their harassment of journalists and media.
In the past two weeks, two journalists were arrested to begin serving previously imposed jail sentences and a third was sentenced to 25 lashes, while a monthly was suspended for two months. Many detained journalists, such as Narges Mohammadi, are being subjected to inhuman and degrading conditions and denied their most basic rights.
Journalist Mahssa Amrabadi, the wife of imprisoned journalist Masoud Bastani, was arrested yesterday after receiving a summons to report to the prosecutor’s office at Evin prison. She was sentenced by a Tehran revolutionary court on 20 February to five years in prison (one definite and four conditional) for giving interviews and writing articles in support of her husband and demanding his release.
She was also sentenced by another Tehran revolutionary court on 14 October 2010 to a year in prison for “anti-government propaganda.” Her husband, who used to work for the daily Farhikhteghan, is in Rajaishahr prison. Arrested on 4 July 2009, he was tried along with many other journalists in the Stalinist-style mass trials that the government began holding in Tehran in August 2009. A revolutionary court sentenced him to six years in prison on 1 November 2009.
Reza Ansari Rad, a journalist with various pro-reform media, was summoned on 2 May to begin serving the one-year jail sentence which he received in 2010 on a charge of “anti-government propaganda” and which was upheld by a Tehran appeal court in March.
Mahmud Shokraieh, a cartoonist with the weekly Nameh Amir in the central city of Arak, was notified on 3 May that he has been sentenced to 25 lashes for portraying a local parliamentary representative as a footballer in a cartoon. The court ruled that Shokraieh had “insulted” the parliamentarian, who sued both him and the newspaper’s editor. The editor was acquitted.
Seid Mohammad Mehdi Tabatabai, the editor of the monthly Nasimebidari, was notified by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance on 30 April that his publication had been suspended for two months by the Tehran prosecutor’s office the previous day for failing to respect the High Council for National Security’s directives.
Each week, the council sends the media a list of subjects to be avoided that vary according to political developments. The latest issue of Nasimebidari included an interview with former President Mohammad Khatami, who is a reformist.
Reporters Without Borders is extremely concerned about the health of Narges Mohammadi, a journalist and spokesperson for the Centre for Human Rights Defenders, who was arrested on 21 April. She is being held in solitary confinement in Section 209 of Evin prison, a section controlled by the intelligence ministry, and her family says she has had a nervous breakdown.
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: Filter not, lest ye be filtered.
May 09, 2012
The website Tabnak reports that Khamenei’s “fatwa” on the illegality of using antifiltering tools in Iran was itself blocked in the country, some 30 hours after it was published on Iranian websites. The ruling was seemingly filtered because it contained the word “antifiltering,” which triggered the country’s censorship system to automatically block it.
The misfire prompted the conservative website to write, “The filtering of a [religious] order is so ugly for the executive [branch] that it can bring into question the whole philosophy of filtering.”
Tabnak has close ties to Mohsen Rezai, the current secretary-general of the Expediency Council and former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
Khamenei, who has the final say in all state matters in the Islamic republic, issued the ruling after being asked about inaccessible websites by the semiofficial Mehr news agency.
Mehr wrote to Khamenei’s office to say that some Iranians, because of their jobs — including journalists — need to visit blocked websites for news and information that is “usually not available on authorized websites.” Mehr then asked what the religious ruling would be in such cases.
In his response, Khameni wrote: “In general, the use of antifiltering software is subject to the laws and regulations of the Islamic republic, and it is not permissible to violate the law.”
In October, Iranian Telecommunications Minister Reza Taghipour said the use of antifiltering tools and virtual private networks (VPN) is a crime.
Iran has one of the toughest online censorship policies in the world. Many Iranians, including regime supporters, use proxies and antifiltering software to access blocked websites, including sites deemed immoral or against Iran’s national interests. Among the tens of thousands of blocked pages are news and opposition websites.
Khamenei’s ruling could create a dilemma for those among his hard-line supporters who browse blocked websites.
However, the fact that his ruling on filtering was itself filtered means that, absurdly, his followers must use antifiltering software to read his view on the illegality of antifiltering software.
Just another day in the Islamic republic.
–Golnaz Esfandiari
At George Washington High School, Denver
I had a lovely time this week in Denver, where I spoke at two schools affiliated with the wonderful Facing History and Ourselves, which works to combat racism and prejudice through education programs worldwide.
CNN aired the video that won the “For Press Freedom” college contest held by CNN, RSF, and the Ford Foundation. The 50-second video was broadcast on World Press Freedom Day (May 3). It’s very good. Check it out!
CNN
May 3, 2012
CNN salutes two sophomores from Western Michigan University for their winning video honoring Press Freedom Day.
