Omid Reza Mir Sayafi
Encyclopedia
Omid Reza Mir Sayafi a 29-year old Iranian
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

 blogger and journalist died in Evin Prison
Evin Prison
Evin House of Detention is a prison in Iran, located in Evin, northwestern Tehran. It is noted for its political prisoners' wing, where prisoners have been held both before and after the 1979 Iranian Revolution...

 in Tehran
Tehran
Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...

 on March 18, 2009.

Mir Sayafi was the first blogger to have died while in prison for his publication. Two other bloggers were killed afterward, and they are the Bahraini blogger Zakariya Rashid Hassan al-Ashiri
Zakariya Rashid Hassan al-Ashiri
Zakariya Rashid Hassan al-Ashiri , also spelled Al Asheri and Aushayri, , a forty-year-old Bahraini blogger and journalist, worked as an editor and writer for a local blog news website in Al Dair, Bahrain. He was killed on April 9, 2011 while in custody of the Bahraini Government...

, who was killed in April 2011 and Brazilian blogger Edinaldo Filgueira
Edinaldo Filgueira
Edinaldo Filgueira, also spelled Ednaldo, , a Brazilian blogger and journalist, editor, and owner of the newspaper and online Jornal o Serrano in Serra do Mel, Brazil, was assassinated by gunmen as he left work. Filgueira was also active in party politics...

, who was killed June 2011.

Career

Mir Sayafi's blog is no longer accessible. But with some searching one can find an archive containing the blog posts that led to his imprisonment. Mir-Sayafi's main area of expertise was traditional Persian music. He also wrote poetry and penned articles for Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

-language electronic art journals. He was apparently well known in Iranian intelligentsia circles.

Death

In December 2008, Mir Sayafi was sentenced to two and half years in prison for allegedly insulting religious leaders and engaging in propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran. When he died, Mir Sayafi was still awaiting an additional trial for insulting Islam.

Reactions

Some human rights groups that his death follows a pattern of Iranian authorities "denying urgent health care to prisoners of conscience, resulting in their death."

Impact

Several citizen media groups, such as the Committee to Protect Bloggers, have announced March 18 as the day of solidarity with persecuted bloggers. The March 18 Movement was created in his memory.

External links

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