Dissident Iranian Journalists 1
Abstract
Even though western countries such as the US, the UK, and the Czech Republic are host to
hundreds of exiled Iranian journalists, unfortunately, there is little academic research on the
activities of this community in western universities. As Wojcieszak, Brouillette,
and Smith
(2013, p. 2) note:
‘there is little information about exiled Iranian
journalists in their host
countries while there is good international attention about the hard conditions of journalists in
Iran
’. My study examines the conditions of two Iranian journalists who chose to leave Iran but
continue to speak out in their second country as a social act. I do this by examining Behrouz
Boochani’s and my own published works. Behrouz Boochani is the writer of
No Friend but the
Mountains
, winner of the Victorian Prize for Literature and the Victorian Premier's Prize for
Nonfiction 2019.
I am the writer of The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree which was
shortlisted for the Stella Prize and the University of Queensland Fiction Award 2018. Boochani
and I are Iranian journalist refugees who applied for refuge in Australia. My refugee case was
accepted in 2011 after seven months living in refugee camps while Behrouz Boochani is still
being kept on Manus Island after six years.
There are three main research questions in this study: Why did some Iranian journalists flee
Iran after the election in 2009 (the Green Movement)? What happened to those who fled to
Australia? How did they find a way to speak out and continue their
journalistic or writing
activities while in exile?
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