The strange case of Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan, which we examined here and here, remains unresolved. The man widely referred to in Iran as the blogfather, widely believed to have had some sort of murky relationship with that country’s security services, and widely known for his see-sawing political views, has seemingly vanished.
Before he returned to Iran, Derakhshan had been living in Toronto, where he initially earned the admiration of the Iranian community there. Ivor Tossell writes:
For a time, he was held in such high regard that when renowned cartoonist Nikahang Kowsar, a fellow Iranian expatriate, drew a cartoon to honour him, he rendered the man who helped kick off Iran’s blogging revolution as a marble statue.
But Mr. Derakhshan’s politics shifted, growing more sympathetic to Iran’s regime. His friendships soured, and Mr. Kowsar’s cartoons ceased to be so flattering. Now, Mr. Kowsar is worried for his former friend.
A month after making a ballyhooed return to Iran, Mr. Derakhshan, 34, has vanished. State media has reported that he’s under arrest, charged with spying for Israel. The Internet is up in arms; the blogosphere is abuzz with concern that one of its stars is in trouble. Human-rights organizations around the world are demanding his release. But in his adoptive home of Toronto, he’s left a bitter divide in the Persian blogging community.
“His enemies have come out stabbing left, right and centre,” says Bahman Kalbasi, a journalist and long-time friend of Mr. Derakhshan’s, as well as a former Persian blogger.
Depending on who you ask, he’s either an idealist and a straight-talker, or an enabler of a repressive regime and - as one acquaintance from his University of Toronto days put it - “a publicity-seeker par excellence.” The debate is swirling across Persian-language blogs and English-language mailing lists. Some even ask if the arrest was a set-up.
“Many people are in doubt,” says Mr. Kowsar. “They wonder if this is a PR stunt.”
The speculation about who, what, where, when and why looks set to continue. But even in the absence of hard news about Derakhshan - three weeks, by my count - he continues to inspire editorials like this one from the Boston Globe:
Derakhshan’s true offense was that he visited Israel twice, and in a most public way - giving interviews to major newspapers, participating in a university conference, and expressing idiosyncratic views about society, politics, and political figures in Iran. He lauded the liberty of the Iranian blogosphere; defined himself as an atheist who admires Ayatollah Khomeini and believes Iran’s theocratic system should be a model for other countries; said he wanted Iranians to realize Israelis are not devils, and Israelis to learn that their received ideas about Iran are all wrong; and argued that Iran should have nuclear weapons for deterrence - but not nuclear energy plants, because of the danger to the environment.
Whatever Derakhshan’s peculiar, fluctuating views may have been, he is clearly no spy. A spy would not make high-profile visits to Israel on his expatriate’s Canadian passport, or praise President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad before flying into Tehran for the first time in years. The famed figure, who goes by the blogonym “hoder,” risks paying a terrible price for assuming that Iran’s rulers could be tolerant of the free expression that most bloggers take for granted.
Everyone in the global village who values that freedom should be calling for the release of the Blogfather.
As we said in an earlier post, “in democracies, frequently changing your mind makes you a figure of fun at worst, but in repressive regimes like Iran, doing that can get you tortured or killed.” That is another reason to stay alert.
Did Lisa Goldman write anything about this?
Is that the friend of his who organized his trip to Israel? I haven’t seen anything. Fabian, if you do, please post a link.