Free Mojtaba and Arash Day

The Committee to Protect Bloggers has declared February 22 to be "Free Mojtaba and Arash Day."

(BBC News story here.)

So, for one day, I will pause from narcissistic bloviation and focus on two really important things: freedom of speech and freedom of conscience.

I've blogged before about the plight of Iranian citizen-journalists.

This story, unfortunately, is more of the same: Arash Sigarchi and Mojtaba Saminejad are in prison in Iran for speaking their minds, in defiance of the authorities. In fact, Arash and Mojtaba apparently angered the mullahs by (among other things) protesting an earlier clampdown on prominent Iranian bloggers.

What can you do about it, halfway around the world from where these unfortunate men are being unjustly imprisoned? In addition to blogging about the situation, the Committee has some suggestions:

If you are in the United States, contact either the Representative at the Iranian Interest Section of the Pakistani Embassy or the Ambassador to Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations. (Iran has no embassy in the United States.) Here is the contact information.

Dr. Mohammad Javad Zarif
Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran
622 Third Ave. New York, NY 10017
Tel: (212) 687-2020 / Fax: (212) 867-7086
E-mail: Email the ambassador

Iranian Representative
Embassy of Pakistan
Interests Section of the Islamic Republic of Iran
2209 Wisconsin Avenue, N.W.Washington, D.C. 20007
Email the Interests Section

If you are outside the U.S., as many of you will be, you can contact either the Permanent Representative to the United Nations or the Iranian ambassador in your own country.

Read a little about Mojtaba and Arash's cases, then take five minutes and drop a line to let the Iranian diplomats know: the whole world is watching.