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Shirin Ebadi (Persian: شيرين عبادى Širin Ebādi; born 21 June 1947) is an Iranian lawyer, a former judge and human rights activist and founder of Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. On 10 October 2003, Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her significant and pioneering efforts for democracy and human rights, especially women's, children's, and refugee rights. She was the first ever Iranian to receive the prize.
In 2009, Ebadi's award was allegedly confiscated by Iranian authorities, though this was later denied by the Iranian government.[3] If true, she would be the first person in the history of the Nobel Prize whose award has been forcibly seized by state authorities.[4]
Ebadi lived in Tehran, but she has been in exile in the UK since June 2009 due to the increase in persecution of Iranian citizens who are critical of the current regime.[5] In 2004, she was listed by Forbes magazine as one of the "100 most powerful women in the world".[6] She is also included in a published list of the "100 most influential women of all time."[7]
Ebadi was born in Hamadan, Iran. Her father, Mohammad Ali Ebadi, was the city's chief notary public and a professor of commercial law. Her family moved to Tehran in 1948.
She was admitted to the law department of the University of Tehran in 1965 and in 1969, upon graduation, passed the qualification exams to become a judge. After a six-month internship period, she officially became a judge in March 1969. She continued her studies in University of Tehran in the meantime to pursue a doctorate's degree in law in 1971. In 1975, she became the first woman president of the Tehran city court, and also the first ever woman judge in Iran.[8]
Following the Iranian revolution in 1979, conservative clerics insisted that Islam prohibits women from becoming judges and Ebadi was demoted to a secretarial position at the branch where she had previously presided. She and other female judges protested and were assigned to the slightly higher position of "law expert." She eventually requested early retirement as the situation remained unchanged.
As her applications were repeatedly rejected, Ebadi was not able to practice as a lawyer until 1993, while she already had a law office permit. She used this free time to write books and many articles in Iranian periodicals.[2]
Ebadi now lectures law at the University of Tehran and is a campaigner for strengthening the legal status of children and women, the latter of which played a key role in the May 1997 landslide presidential election of the reformist Mohammad Khatami.
As a lawyer, she is known for taking up pro bono cases of dissident figures who have fallen foul of the judiciary. She has represented the family of Dariush Forouhar, a dissident intellectual and politician who was found stabbed to death at his home. His wife, Parvaneh Eskandari, was also killed at the same time.
The couple were among several dissidents who died in a spate of grisly murders that terrorized Iran's intellectual community. Suspicion fell on extremist hard-liners determined to put a stop to the more liberal climate fostered by President Khatami, who championed freedom of speech. The murders were found to be committed by a team of the employees of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence, whose head, Saeed Emami, allegedly committed suicide in jail before being brought to court.
Ebadi also represented the family of
According to the Associated Press, on 27 August 2007, Ebadi was sued by a Canadian author and political analyst, Shahir Shahidsaless—who writes and publishes in Persian—in U.S. District Court in Manhattan saying she reneged on getting a publisher for a book she had requested him to write under her supervision, titled "A Useful Enemy". The initial suit was dismissed due to lack of jurisdiction of the court, and not the substance of the case, which was never tried. The case is currently being considered at the New York State Court.
In 2004, Ebadi filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Treasury because of restrictions she faced over publishing her memoir in the United States. American trade laws include prohibitions on writers from embargoed countries. The law also banned American literary agent Wendy Strothman from working with Ebadi. Azar Nafisi wrote a letter in support of Ebadi. Nafisi said that the law infringes on the First Amendment.[52] After a long legal battle, Ebadi won and was able to publish her memoir in the United States.[53]
Ebadi said while in London in late November 2009 that her Nobel Peace Prize medal and diploma had been taken from their bank box alongside her Légion d'honneur and a ring she had received from Germany's association of journalists.[29] She said they had been taken by the Revolutionary Court approximately three weeks previously.[29][30][31] Ebadi also said her bank account was frozen by authorities.[29][32][33] Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Jonas Gahr Støre expressed his "shock and disbelief" at the incident.[29] The Iranian foreign ministry subsequently denied the confiscation, and also criticised Norway for interfering in Iran's affairs.[34][35]
In December 2008, Iranian police shut down the office of a human rights group led by her.[27] Another human rights group, Human Rights Watch, has said it was "extremely worried" about Ebadi's safety.[28]
In April 2008 Ebadi released a statement saying: "Threats against my life and security and those of my family, which began some time ago, have intensified," and that the threats warned her against making speeches abroad, and defending Iran's minority Baha'i community.[24] In August 2008, the IRNA news agency published an article attacking Ebadi's links to the Bahá'í Faith and accused her of seeking support from the West. It also criticized Ebadi for defending homosexuals, appearing without the Islamic headscarf abroad, questioning Islamic punishments, and "defending CIA agents."[25] It accused her daughter, Nargess Tavassolian, of conversion to the Bahá'í faith, a capital offense in the Islamic Republic. Her daughter believes "the government wanted to scare my mother with this scenario." Ebadi believes the attacks are in retaliation for her agreeing to defend the families of the seven Baha’is arrested in May.[26]
In April 2008 she told Reuters news agency that Iran's human rights record had regressed in the past two years[23] and agreed to defend Baha’is arrested in Iran in May 2008.
Since receiving the Nobel Prize Ebadi has lectured, taught and received awards in different countries, issued statements and defended people accused of political crimes in Iran. She has traveled to and spoken to audiences in India, the United States, and other countries; released her autobiography in an English translation. With five other Nobel laureates, she created the Nobel Women's Initiative to promote peace, justice and equality for women.[2]
In Iran, officials of the Islamic Republic were either silent or critical of the selection of Ebadi, calling it a political act by a pro-Western institution and were also critical when Ebadi did not cover her hair at the Nobel award ceremony.[20] IRNA reported it in few lines that the evening newspapers and the Iranian state media waited hours to report the Nobel committee's decision—and then only as the last item on the radio news update.[21] Reformist officials are said to have "generally welcomed the award", but "come under attack for doing so."[22] Reformist president Mohammad Khatami did not officially congratulate Ms. Ebadi and stated that although the scientific Nobels are important, the Peace Prize is "not very important" and was awarded to Ebadi on the basis of "totally political criteria".[22] Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi, the only official to initially congratulate Ebadi, defended the president saying "abusing the President's words about Ms. Ebadi is tantamount to abusing the prize bestowed on her for political considerations".
She presented a book entitled Democracy, human rights, and Islam in modern Iran: Psychological, social and cultural perspectives to the Nobel Committee. The volume documents the historical and cultural basis of democracy and human rights from Cyrus and Darius, 2,500 years ago to Mohammad Mossadeq, the Prime Minister of modern Iran who nationalized the oil industry.
The decision of the Nobel committee surprised some observers worldwide. Pope Saint John Paul II had been predicted to win the Peace Prize amid speculation that he was nearing death. Some observers viewed Ebadi's selection as a calculated and political one along the lines of the selection of Lech Wałęsa and Mikhail Gorbachev, among others, for the award. Furthermore, they suggested that Ebadi's activities were not directly related to the goals of the prize as originally expressed by Alfred Nobel.
On 10 October 2003, Shirin Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts for democracy and human rights, especially for the rights of women and children.[18] The selection committee praised her as a "courageous person" who "has never heeded the threat to her own safety".[19] Now she travels abroad lecturing in the West. She is against a policy of forced regime change. Her husband, Javad Tavassolian, was an advisor to President Khatami.
Since the victory of Hassan Rouhani in 2013 Iranian presidential election Shirin Ebadi in various occasions has expressed her worry about the growing human rights violations in her homeland. Ebadi in her Dec. 2013 speech at Human Rights Day seminar at Leiden University angrily said: "I will shut up but the problems of Iran will not be solved".[17]
Regarding her views on the Shia religion in Iran, she has said, after the Arabs came, and Iran converted to Islam, "Eventually we turned to the Shiite sect, which was different from the Arabs, who are Sunni" noting Persians were still Muslims but "We were Iranian."[16]
Ebadi also indirectly expressed her views on Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In April 2010, Associated Students of the University of California passed a bill calling for the University to Divest itself from what it saw as Israeli war crimes, by breaking ties with companies providing technology to the Israel Defense Forces. Shirin Ebadi, together with three other Peace Prize laureates, supported the bill.[15]
However, in a 2012 interview, Ebadi has stated: "The [Iranian] people want to stop enrichment but the government doesn’t listen. Iran is situated on a fault line and people are scared of a Israel will be wiped out. If the Iranian people are able to topple the government, this could improve the situation. [In 2009] the people of Iran rose up and were badly suppressed. Right now, Iran is the country with the most journalists in prison. This is the price people are paying."[14]
Aside from being economically justified, it has become a cause of national pride for an old nation with a glorious history. No Iranian government, regardless of its ideology or democratic credentials, would dare to stop the program.[13]
Subsequently, Ebadi has openly defended the Islamic regime's nuclear development programme:
At a press conference shortly after the Peace Prize announcement, Ebadi herself explicitly rejected foreign interference in the country's affairs: "The fight for human rights is conducted in Iran by the Iranian people, and we are against any foreign intervention in Iran."[11][12]
At the same time, Ebadi expresses a nationalist love of Iran and a critical view of the Western world. She opposed the pro-Western Shah, initially supported the Islamic Revolution, and remembers the CIA's 1953 overthrow of prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq with rage.
In the last 23 years, from the day I was stripped of my judgeship to the years of doing battle in the revolutionary courts of Tehran, I had repeated one refrain: an interpretation of Islam that is in harmony with equality and democracy is an authentic expression of faith. It is not religion that binds women, but the selective dictates of those who wish them cloistered. That belief, along with the conviction that change in Iran must come peacefully and from within, has underpinned my work."[10]
In her book Iran Awakening, Ebadi explains her political/religious views on Islam, democracy and gender equality
She also helped in the drafting of the original text of a law against physical abuse of children, which was passed by the Iranian parliament in 2002.
Ebadi has also defended various Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC).[9]
This case brought increased focus on Iran from human rights groups abroad. [9]
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