Bloggers protest against crackdown

A big campaign has been organized by Iranian bloggers to protest against the recent arrests and the violent crackdown on the Internet.

A big number of them have decided not only to copy the news from banned websites into their own blogs, but even to symbolically change the name of their blogs to "Emrooz", the banned website which still operates, on Monday.

Hundreds of Iranian bloggers have announced their support for the protest and the number is growing rapidly. However, the protest needs some publicity by Western media to be enough effective.

Update:

- Persian media have picked up the news with great interest: BBC Persian, Radio Farda, Iran Newspaper (in Tehran), etc.

- Abtahi, the blogger vice-president, has supported the protest in a new post titled "Emrooz" and has said that Mostafa Tajzadeh, the top reformist politician behind Emrooz website, is totally impressed by the wide-spread support of the Persian blogosphere.

- Ignasio has gathered a rather big list of participating blogs with quotes from them in Persian.

- Mostafa Tajzadeh, the man in charge of Emrooz, has thanked all who participated in the protest. I'll try to summerize it later in a separate post.

- Initial reaction by the hardline conservatives appeared in Jomhouri-e Eslami, the radical newsppaer as a personal attack to me, which, in Iran, is seen as a symbol of honor and many respected intellectuals and political activists have recieved it.