Hossein Derakhshan

Hossein Derakhshan (born January 7, 1975 ) is a Canadian - Iranian blogger and political activist. He is considered the father of the Iranian blogger and podcast movement . He was arrested for political reasons by the Iranian government in 2008 and was detained in Evin Prison until November 19, 2014 .

In 2000, Derakhshan went to Toronto to study . On September 11, 2001 , while searching for information, he came across blogs and shortly afterwards started blogging himself. On November 5, 2001, he published a step-by-step guide in Persian on how to start a blog. He later opened the blog hoder.com using the blogger publishing platform .

This led to a great growth in the Persian blog scene, which was later called the "blogger revolution". In 2004 there were 64,000 Persian blogs registered, making Iran the country with the fifth most bloggers in the world.

On November 1, 2008, he was arrested. After two years of pre-trial detention, Derakhshan was sentenced in September 2010 by Abolqasem Salavati , judge of the 15th division of the Islamic Revolutionary Court, to 19 years and 6 months in prison and a fine of 30,000 euros. He was accused of blasphemy , propaganda against the Islamic government, collaborating with hostile governments and running an obscene website. In June 2011 the verdict was confirmed. On December 9, 2010, Derakhshan was temporarily released on a bail payment equivalent to 1.5 million US dollars . On May 6, 2011, Derakhshan updated his Facebook profile with a series of photos and the short status update " On a very short leave from Evin ". He was released on November 19, 2014 after a pardon from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei .

In 2015, in an essay, he turned against social media such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram , which, in his opinion, led to information centralization and thus easier controllability and to a flattening of the discourse. During his imprisonment, these had replaced the blogs as discussion media.