Staff and Board

The CJFE Board of Directors

Staff:

• List of CJFE staff

Board of Directors:

• Arnold Amber, President
• Morteza Abdolalian
• Bob Carty
• Havoc Franklin
• Peter Jacobsen
• Alice Klein, Vice-President
• Donald Livingstone, Treasurer
• Anita Mielewczyk, Secretary
• Michelle Shephard
• Frank Switzer
• Anna Maria Tremonti
• Paula Todd
• Nadine Touma
• Philip Tunley

Mori ( Morteza Abdolalian)

Cartoon by: Iranian International Award Winning Cartoonist & journalist Nik Kosar

Morteza (Mori) Abdolalian

The journalist, poet and translator Morteza Abdolalian has spent much of his academic and professional career abroad. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was in the Philippines to continue his education and the struggle against the Iranian regime. Articles by Morteza, published in the university campus newspaper (Dawn), that were critical of Guards in the campus resulted in him being blacklisted and cautioned by security for expulsion from Philippines.
From 1980 to 1982, he worked for the Iranian students' publication Akhgar. When he returned to Iran the following year, he was arrested at the airport and transferred to Evin prison. After he was repeatedly persecuted, re-arrested, imprisoned, and, on one occasion, kidnapped in the Streets of Tehran, he decided to escape Iran and go back to the Philippines.
Returning to the Philippines, Morteza continued to write about both the political and human rights situation in Iran. When the Philippines became unsafe for Morteza, he moved to Japan and lived there for five years, where he worked as a reporter for an Iranian political newspaper and, carrying on with his advocacy of human rights in Iran, he settled in Canada in 1989. He is a member of the Oakville Writers' Group and Pen Canada writer in exile and contributes to several local Iranian publications. Morteza currently runs a blog called Iran Watch Canada (www.moriab.blogspot.com) which monitors daily violation of human rights in Iran.

Morteza joined the Board in 2002. He is very active with CJFE, and he is a member of the CIFET Board of Trustees. Having been blindfolded at gun point, imprisoned and kidnapped from the street, he would like to use his position to help journalists in distress around the world and to develop the multicultural diversity of the Board.

Link:
http://www.cjfe.org/about_us/staff_and_board