Free Lantern

Light a candle for the memory of Neda and other martyrs of the green movement…

12th of June will mark the first anniversary of the rigged Iranian election. Some activists in Iran have made a beautiful English song entitles Going Green. I haven’t had a good chance to update here regularly but I have to share this with you and will try to keep here updated with the news during this time:
Listen and read the beautiful lyrics, If you want you can also watch the video here in YouTube (attention the video contains grafic images)

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Through all those fears and dreads, that let me down
Is there still a road for me to stay on…to go on…

I thought I would be lone tonight, But I’m not
Voices out there calling me “Here’s the fight”…

Things have changed, hope’s growing in veins
Hands in hands will stand to the end…

The time has come to break the chains
Send love and peace to the world again
Getting our pride back, once we lost
We’re gonna win, We’re going green

Maybe they could choke a cry, burn, deny…
But the choir rises up, roaring “Not giving up”…

Things have changed, hope’s growing in veins
Hands in hands will stand to the end…

The time has come to break the chains
Send love and peace to the world again
Getting our pride back, once we lost
We’re gonna win, We’re going green

We’re going green… We’re going green…We’ll be free again… We’re going green

March 12th is the world day against cyber censorship and is celebrated by Reporters without borders. As Iran has one of the highest internet censorships in thee world, I wanted to honor this day in my blog, even if in just a few words…

A few days ago I wrote about Poster4Tomorrow in my Persian blog, this poster is one of the best posters in their last year’s competition entitled, “The pencil is mightier than sword”. The poster is a work by Andrea Castelletti, Italian artist with the title: “Limit the freedom of Speech”.
More about this competition and the recent competition of Poster4Tomorrow in their website. I think this poster is the best way to describe freedom of speech in Iran today…

Committee to protect Journalists in its latest monthly survey announced that after the recent crackdown on media in February Iran has hit a new record in the world with 52 journalists in prison, a third of all those in jail around the world. After Iran China with 24 journalists in prison and Cuba with 22 have the second and biggest prison for journalists. Read the complete report here.

Caricature by Nikahang Kowsar

To say happy 8th of March I made this image in Inkscape, I got the idea from the booklet of 1 million signature campaign that was distributed today in Iran.

This year winter has been cold with a lot of snow in Muenster. I’ve been doing some night (and day) photography and finally I got a chance to upload some of them in my photoblog.
The first and second photos are taken before the Christmas holidays showing the St. Labmerti church in Muenster and the other three are taken from Burg Vischering, a famous water castle in the area.
To see the photos in bigger size in the photoblog click on them. I used my new Tamron AF 10-24 objective (Canon mount) and a tripod for all these photos.

I thought I’ll also share a few words about the objective. The picture quality is great, and it definitely is good value for the money. If compared to the ultra wide Canon (or Nikon) objectives it is relatively cheap. The build quality is also relatively good and there is a 5 year guaranty on it. Here you can read the dpreview on the objective.

Amazon.UK , Amazon.US

A video shot by a security personnel (or basiji member) has been released after 8 months showing security forces crackdown on the University of Tehran campus (15th of June 2009, 3 days after the disputed election). The video shows how violent the security forces attack, beat up and arrest the students. In almost all the video you can hear swear words from the “Police” at students and you can hear that someone is constantly showting “dont’ hit” which seems to be between the few people in these forces that has a sign of humanity. Watch CNN report on this video in the rest of this post and for a complete video on YouTube click here (18 min) (contains graphic images).

Now if you want to see what was left from the student hostels after this attack, you can watch these two videos which were taken by students (1, 2).

Maziar Bahari’s letter to Khamenei (NYT):

Your government issued me a press card. But I was coerced to make a false televised confession admitting that I was acting as an agent of evil Western media. I was forced to say the media are trying to overthrow the Islamic government. I was beaten and threatened with execution to make that confession. I was beaten again after the show because I did not perform as well as my interrogator would have liked. Yes, Ayatollah Khamenei, I had to apologize to you on television to stop my torturer from punching me in the head.

A former Basij member -the Iranian religious militia- in an interview with Channel 4 has revealed part of the abuse and killing they’ve been ordered to do. It is a short video worth watching (Might contain graphic images).
You can also hear to the whole interview in Persian and read the article here.

Human rights violations in Iran are now as bad as at any time in the past 20 years, Amnesty International has said in a new report on the aftermath of last June’s presidential election. (Read the whole article here)
Bellow you can watch the interview of Dr. Arash Hejazi who was the witness of Neda’s death with Amnesty International: