Introducing: Freedom Desk with Jason Rezaian

0:00In 2014, the Iranian government decided I was a spy.

0:08I had been living and working in Iran for years leading up to that point when I was hired as the Washington Post's correspondent and then bureau chief. And I was doing all of this with permission of the Iranian government. And then one day when my wife and I were leaving our house, we were abducted at gunpoint. They blindfolded us and then hauled us into Avin prison. And we were really confused, had no idea what was going on. Jason Rezaian has been languishing in an Iranian jail. His crime, we still don't know. And then they started leveling accusations against us. They accused me of being the station chief of the CIA's operations in Tehran.

0:53Rezaian has been imprisoned there on espionage charges that The Washington Post calls beyond ludicrous. And the first piece of evidence was the fact that I had started a Kickstarter project to bring avocados to Iran.

1:09This was a video I posted in 2009 on Kickstarter. You can see a slightly younger version of me with a little bit more hair. And one of the many troubling things that I saw in Iran this year, or didn't see, was the fact that there's no avocados. Go back in time with me for a second, back to 2009. The avocado was having a moment, pretty much everywhere, except for Iran. And for me, as someone who was born and raised in California and had known the joys of avocados since childhood, I wanted the people of Iran to be able to experience them too. I want to know why it is that I can't make welcome over.

1:54I want to know why it is that nobody's talking about guacamole. Why is it most people never even heard of an avocado? And that's true.

2:07This was obviously a joke, but it was also a metaphor. Part of a bigger goal that I had to show how sanctions were affecting every aspect of Iranian life. Jason has been imprisoned in Tehran for nothing more than writing about the hopes and the fears of the Iranian people. We will not rest until we bring him home to his family, safe and sound. I spent 544 days in an Iranian prison over a f***ing avocado project.

2:44I'm Jason Rezaian and this is The Freedom Desk a show about freedoms gained, freedoms lost who's trying to take it from us and how we're going to take it back Some countries know that they're going to get an extra mileage out of arresting a journalist because there's a chilling effect If there is one thing that we as journalists as news organizations can be activists about it's got to be press freedom. We'll try to answer the difficult questions facing people fighting for freer societies around the world. The ones who really spoke up, the ones who were critical, they are in jail. That's press freedom in India.

3:24If we are fighting for democracy and freedom in Iran, at the bare minimum, we should be supporting democratic principles in our own conversations. I know what it feels like to have your freedoms taken from you. And unfortunately, that's not unique to me. I hope this show helps provide a roadmap for maintaining and protecting those freedoms. We'll be dropping new episodes every week. Find the Freedom Desk with me, Jason Rezaian, on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

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