Shirin Ebadi

Shirin Ebadi (شیرین عبادی in Persian) (Hamadan, Iran, June 21, 1947) is an Iranian lawyer who campaigns for human rights and democracy. She was the first Iranian and Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize (October 10, 2003).

Biography

Ebadi was born into an educated Iranian family; His father, Mohammad Ali Ebadí, was one of the first professors of Commercial Law in Iran, was a notary public and author of several books. Her mother devoted herself to the education of her three daughters and her son. Within a year of Shirin's birth, the family moved to Tehran, where she attended Anoshiravn Dadgar and Reza Shah Kabir schools before graduating as a lawyer from Tehran University in 1968, and in 1969 became one of the first female judges of his country. At the same time she continued studying and in 1971 she obtained with honors a master's degree in Private Law. In 1975 she was the first Iranian woman to become president of a court.

After the 1979 Islamic revolution, women were banned from serving as judges, so all female Iranian judges were removed from office and assigned to administrative jobs. Ebadi was appointed secretary of the same court that she previously presided over. She protested against it and got a promotion as a counselor in the Ministry of Justice. Dissatisfied, she applied for early retirement, which was granted.

Due to the years-long closure of the Iranian Bar Association by the revolutionary authorities, Ebadi was also unable to obtain a license to practice law until 1992, when she was able to open her own office, and in the meantime wrote several books and published numerous articles in various Iranian publications.

After several years practicing as a lawyer in murder and divorce trials, she also began to assume the defense in cases with political implications on a national scale, practicing as a lawyer in the murder of the Foruhar couple, or of the student Ezzatollah Ebrahimneyad, assassinated in the assault by Basiyite militias on the student residence of the University of Tehran in 1999. In the course of this latest case, Ebadí was accused of sending President Khatami evidence of the responsibility of government agents in the murder of students, for what that she was arrested and spent three weeks in jail in 2000, though her five-year jail sentence and the withdrawal of her license were revoked.

Ebadi was a lawyer for important figures of Iranian culture and politics, such as Dr. Habibollah Peymán, the novelist Abbas Maarufi or the publisher Faraŷ Sarkuhí. Likewise, she took on cases of such social and political resonance in Iran as those of child abuse.

She is a co-founder of two non-governmental organizations: the Association for the Defense of Children's Rights in 1995, for which she was primarily responsible for five years, and the Center for Human Rights Defenders, established in 2001 to, in accordance with its statutes, to provide "free legal defense to those persecuted for reasons of conscience and politics" and "support to the families of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience", as well as "reporting on cases of human rights violations in Iran".

Nobel Prize

On October 10, 2003, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded Shirín Ebadí the Nobel Peace Prize for "her efforts for democracy and human rights," recognizing her particular attention to the "fight for the rights of women and children". The Committee recognized her "professional good sense"; and hers "her courage", stating that Ebadí "has never paid attention to threats to her own safety".

The decision to award Ebadí surprised a good number of observers, who were betting on the granting of the award to John Paul II, already at an advanced age. Supporters of the Polish pope criticized the political nature of Ebadí's election, comparing it to prizes awarded to Lech Walesa or Mikhail Gorbachev, and objecting that none of Ebadí's previous activities met the criteria set for the prize by Afred Nobel: "the person who has done more or better for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of armies and for the organization and promotion of peace congresses".

Ebadí presented to the Nobel committee a book entitled Democracy, human rights and Islam in modern Iran: psychological, social and cultural perspectives, in which he listed the cultural bases for democracy and human rights in Iran, from the Antiquity of Cyrus and Darius to the nationalization of oil in contemporary times by the popular Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq.

Authorities and government media inside Iran also expressed their misgivings about the awarding of the prize, dismissing the event as a political act by a pro-Western institution, or acknowledging merit with caution. Ebadí also received criticism for attending the delivery ceremony in Oslo without covering her hair, as required by Iranian law.

Threats

Recipient of the Nobel Prize, Shirín Ebadí gave lectures and courses and received subsequent awards in different countries around the world, while continuing to defend people accused of political crimes in Iran. In the spring of 2008, Ebadí denounced being threatened to make her give up giving speeches abroad and defending the Baha'i community, despite which, in June, she assumed the defense of 5 personalities of this confession arrested the previous month.. In August 2008, the state news agency IRNA published an article attacking Ebadí, accusing her of belonging to the Baha'i faith, being an agent of the "West", defending homosexuals, appearing without covering the hair abroad, question the Islamic penal system, and defend "CIA agents". Her daughter Narges Tavassolian was accused in the same article of having converted to Bahaism, which would constitute an act of apostasy, punishable in the Islamic Republic with the death penalty. The Center for Human Rights Defenders run by her was closed by the police in December 2008, drawing international condemnation. A few days later, her home and her professional office were harassed by "protesters"; pro governmental.

2009 election and subsequent political activism

The controversial Iranian presidential elections of June 2009 and the wide wave of arrests of political militants and social activists occurred while Shirín Ebadí was abroad, who, faced with massive suspicions of fraud, spoke out in favor of holding new elections. The harsh repression of the protests over the perceived fraud led Ebadí, now in exile, to repeatedly denounce, before various international institutions, the serious human rights crisis that was unfolding in Iran and to call on foreign governments to boycott the incoming cabinet of Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Faced with the failure of these calls, Shirín Ebadí accused Western governments, like other Iranian activists, of indifference to the human rights situation in Iran.

Retaliation

In November 2009, Ebadí denounced from London the confiscation by the Iranian authorities of several of his trophies: the Nobel Prize medal and diploma, the French Legion of Honor banner and a ring received from a German journalists association. Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre expressed shock, to which Iranian authorities responded by denying the seizure and criticizing Norway for meddling in Iranian internal affairs. Even so, in March 2010, Ebadí Nasrín Sotudé's lawyer reported in an interview with Radio Fardá television about the embargo in Iran of the assets and possessions of Mrs. Shirín Ebdí, up to a maximum amount of 500 million Flechas stand (approx. 500,000 US dollars), for "non-payment of taxes" for the Nobel Prize, as well as "speeches in foreign countries".

In December 2009, the sister of Shirín Ebadí was arrested, a fact denounced as an act of retaliation by the Nobel Prize winner, who also denounced an alleged harassment suffered by Nushín Ebadí in the previous two months by the Iranian secret services to convince her to abandon her political and pro-human rights militancy.

On May 10, 2010, the 20.30 program, the star news program on Iranian state television IRIB, broadcast a program about Shirín Ebadí in which she intervened to launch marital accusations and complaints about her husband Yavad Tavassolian, which was denounced by the daughter of the couple as a "forced confession" by the security apparatus of the Islamic Republic. The broadcast occurred four months after Tavassolian was expelled from his job at a state company.

Awards and distinctions

• 1996, Official Human Rights Watch Spectator Award.
• 2001, Rafto Human Rights Price of Norway.
• 2003, Nobel Peace Prize.
• 2004, Doctor Honoris causa by University of Maryland, College Park.
• 2004, Doctor Honoris causa by the University of Toronto.
• 2004, Doctor Honoris causes Simon Fraser University.
• 2004, Doctor Honoris causa by the University of Akureyri.
• 2005, Doctor honoris causes the Australian Catholic University.
• 2005, Doctor honoris causa by the University of San Francisco.
• 2005, Doctor honoris causa por la Universidad Concordia.
• 2005, Doctor Honoris causa by the University of York.
• 2005, Doctor honoris causa por la Universidad Jean Moulin de Lyon.
• 2005, Citizen Peace Construction Award, ICU.
• 2006, Legion of Honor.
• 2007, Doctor honoris causa por la Universidad Loyola Chicago.
• 2007, Doctor Honoris causa por la Universidad The New School.
• 2009, Doctor honoris causa by the University of Marquette.
• 2010, Doctor honoris causa by the European University of Madrid.
• 2018, Doctor Honoris causa por la Universidad de Lérida
• 2018, Special Award for a Life of Optimism and Commitment awarded by Last Last night I had a Dream