Publishing in Iran

Tonight my program had a seminar entitled Publishing in Iran. It was a presentation given by a former student (an Iranian), who had gone through the course last year. He had been one of three former students who had given a short speech on the first day of our induction on what to expect over the course of the year. He gave a very interesting talk on the Iranian publishing industry, the censorship the government imposes on the industry and how they implement it, and the state of copyright issues in Iran (officially there aren't any, because Iran hasn't signed any of the international copyright treaties). It was a very interesting talk.

He also mentioned that he had been in Iran during the protests after the presidential elections a few months ago. Drinks were served after the talk (which was odd-usually we have drinks before a talk), and I got the chance to ask him what it was like being in Tehran during the protests. It was then that I found out that he had been the doctor (before entering publishing he had studied medicine) who had been standing next to Neda when she was shot and the one who subsequently tried (unsuccessfully) to save her life. Needless to say, I was floored. I paid quite a bit of attention to the Iranian election and subsequent protests, and Neda's death was the most significant event of the demonstrations, other than the obviously fixed election results themselves. I asked him a few more questions about what he thought about the post-election state of Iran, and the feeling in the country during the protests, but the fact that he was involved in such a pivotal moment kind of threw me off my game. An extremely powerful revelation.

Youtube links are here, here and here to give this some context, in case you don't know what I'm talking about. In the first link, Arash is the guy on the right in the white shirt. Wow.