CBC journalist Ghazal Mosadeq recently returned to Tehran from Toronto and filed an audio report for the Dispatches program on the current state of publishing and censorship in Iran. Writers, readers and book-sellers are all trapped in a system of rules which are often tacit, confused and haphazard.
Of particular interest is the lack of trust that has developed between reader and publisher as a result of years of censorship. Mosadeq also reports from a cemetery which contains the gravesite of twenty Iranian writers, some specifically requesting that they be buried there as a final chance to be separate from the repressive state. The government, meanwhile, tries to stop this, in an effort to avoid turning the cemetery into a shrine to its critics. Censored while alive; still censored after death.
Hear the 8-minute audio dispatch here (RealPlayer)
