Press Freedom Day: Human rights in the Blogosphere - news.amnesty - Amnesty International

Press Freedom Day: Human rights in the Blogosphere - news.amnesty - Amnesty International: "Bloggers in Iran set out ideas and advocate policies that are widely regarded to be a step ahead of current social, political and human rights debates. Bloggers' sites addressing women's rights in Iran provide a platform -- or tribune -- for pushing forward women's social, political and economic rights. The persistent pressure exerted by bloggers in the case of Afsaneh Norouzi, who was convicted of murdering a high-ranking security and intelligence official who had tried to rape her, played no small part in her recently being spared the death penalty and finally released from prison after more than seven years' detention.
They also provide a means for other bloggers to get in touch with this burgeoning community in Iran. Blogs by members of Iran's ethnic minorities and their organisations, such as the Association for the Defence of Children's Rights, in Sanandaj, Kordestan, help advance this field of rights in a region where awareness is hampered by fewer outlets to international standards and meaningful ways of transmitting the information to the people who live there in their own language.
Electronic civil disobedience is not without risk. In both Iran and China, the authorities have increasingly targeted bloggers to stifle dissent. Bloggers are sometimes arrested and sites discussing political or social issues shut down or redirected to entertainment forums. In one recent case highlighted by Reporters sans fronti�res, an Iranian blogger, Mohamad Reza Abdollahi, was sentenced on appeal to six months in prison and a fine of 1 million rials for supposedly insulting the country's leaders and making anti-government propaganda. Police subsequently arrested his wife, another blogger whom they accused of 'defending her husband too openly'. Najmeh Oumidparvar, who was f"