Title
Iran and the West: Confrontation or Dialogue?
Presenter
Akbar Ganji
Biography
Akbar Ganji is a leading Iranian political dissident and journalist. A supporter of the Islamic revolution as a youth, he became disenchanted in the mid-1990s and served time in Tehran's Evin Prison from 2001 to 2006 after publishing a series of stories on the murder of dissident authors known as the Chain Murders of Iran. While in prison he issued a manifesto which established him as the first "prominent dissident, believing Muslim and former revolutionary" to call for a replacement of Iran's theocratic system with "a secular democracy." His 80 days long hunger strike in prison captured the attention of the international community, with several Nobel Peace laureates, and thousands of intellectuals and human rights activists around the world speaking and writing on his behalf. In recent years Ganji has won several international awards for his work, including the World Association of Newspapers' Golden Pen of Freedom Award, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression's International Press Freedom Award, the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, and the John Humphrey Freedom Award.
