a democrat by example, and a man of peace
Ardeshir Gholipour
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Mr Gholipour has been held in [Australian] immigration detention since March 2000, having fled Iran earlier that year. International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee based at the organisation's headquarters in London has investigated Mr Gholipour's story and we can confirm the legitimacy of his claims, and that he has real reason to fear persecution for his legitimate and peaceful political activism should he be returned to Iran. His involvement in the Iran Freedom Movement and the Left Union for Democracy in Iran makes him particularly vulnerable to repression.
As a writer, specifically for the Left Union for Democracy's publication, the Payan peroz Research Bulletin, between 1994 and 1997, and for his work for the samizdat newspaper Khaber Nameh, Gholipour has been particularly courageous in his stance against suppression of dissent in Iran. Notably, Khaber Nameh provided reports and commentary on the murders of prominent writers in the late 1990s, for which a number of Iranian officials were later convicted.
One of those murdered was Pirooz Davani, also a writer, and with whom, until his murder in 1998, Gholipour worked closely. Both worked on articles for Khaber that were strongly critical of the Iranian government and called for constitutional change. Information they published included reports of mass graves containing the bodies of dissidents, and implicating the security services in the deaths and the torture of political activists.
This clandestine magazine also published letters from the well known writer, Faraj Sarkoohi, who at that time had been abducted by intelligence services then sentenced to death, subsequently released and now living in exile in Germany. To publish such articles in late 1990s was an extremely courageous and dangerous activity for which Davani paid with his life.
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reprinted at melbourne indymedia
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Ardeshir Gholipour's art
at Bid For Freedom/The Brigidine Nuns' Asylum Seekers' Project
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link BARISTA
