Night letter
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

A night letter is an unsigned leaflet distributed clandestinely.


Afghanistan

Night letters have been a tactic employed by the
Taliban The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalist, militant Islamist, jihadist, and Pasht ...
and other extremist groups in Afghanistan to intimidate supporters of secular government and education.


Iran

There is a history of ''shabnameh'' ("night letters") in Iran. Shabnameh were widely distributed in the 20th century in Iran over the course of several revolutionary movements.


Israel

In the late 1970s, Israeli peace activists belonging to the Shelly Party, a small left-wing party then holding two seats in the
Knesset The Knesset ( he, הַכְּנֶסֶת ; "gathering" or "assembly") is the unicameral legislature of Israel. As the supreme state body, the Knesset is sovereign and thus has complete control of the entirety of the Israeli government (with ...
, distributed numerous such night letters in the postboxes of
Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the ...
houses. The leaflets contained eye-witness testimonies on severe
human rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...
violations committed by
IDF IDF or idf may refer to: Defence forces * Irish Defence Forces * Israel Defense Forces *Iceland Defense Force, of the US Armed Forces, 1951-2006 * Indian Defence Force, a part-time force, 1917 Organizations * Israeli Diving Federation * Interac ...
soldiers in the
Occupied Territories Military occupation, also known as belligerent occupation or simply occupation, is the effective military control by a ruling power over a territory that is outside of that power's sovereign territory.Eyāl Benveniśtî. The international law ...
, whose publication was forbidden by the military censorship. The leaflets were unsigned and at the time the party denied any connection with them. Only many years later did
Uri Avnery Uri Avnery ( he, אורי אבנרי, also transliterated Uri Avneri; 10 September 1923 – 20 August 2018) was an Israeli writer, politician, and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement. A member of the Irgun as a teenager, Avnery sat for tw ...
, at the time Knesset member for Shelly, admit to having composed the leaflets and organised their distribution, stating that this act was justified since the censorship had abused its power to withhold information from the public.


See also

*
Samizdat Samizdat (russian: самиздат, lit=self-publishing, links=no) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the document ...
: a similar form of surreptitious dissident literature in the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...


References


External links

* http://www.thefreedictionary.com/night+letter * http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/night%20letter Publications by format {{Lit-genre-stub