Jesse Brown writes:
If you haven’t been following the case of Hossein Derakhshan, here’s all you really need to know: he’s a blogger and a Canadian citizen who was arrested in Tehran in 2008 because of things he wrote. He was finally tried, and now he may be executed, and the Canadian government has done nothing to help him.
There are many more details, of course. Details of good things he’s done, like when he taught thousands of Iranians how to blog in their own language, and when he traveled to Israel to show his readers that Israelis were not their enemies. And there are details of lousy things he’s done, like when he decided to support Ahmadinejadand and his nuclear arms program, and when he turned on peaceful friends and baited the media.
And there are details that muddy his case: he is also an Iranian citizen, and Iran doesn’t recognize dual citizenship, and that makes it harder for Canada to do anything, and so they haven’t tried.
But these details are irrelevant. “Hoder” is a Canadian citizen with the same rights as any other, and the fact that his country is sitting idle while he faces execution is a shame and an outrage.
If the Canadian Embassy is pressured to do something, they might, and that could well save Hossein’s life. The Canadian Embassy in Iran can be contacted at teran@international.gc.ca.
