My free speech heroine is Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights lawyer and activist who won the Nobel Prize. She is an extraordinary woman who has taken the most courageous stance against the Iranian government on behalf of those who have been tortured or killed, speaking out, taking up their cases into court and giving voice to the horrors that have been perpetrated by the regime. She was a qualified lawyer, sitting as a judge when the revolution took place and the Shah was ousted. She had imagined that a new democratic era was dawning but instead was removed from her judicial post simply because she was a woman, as the Ayatollah’s men believed law was a male preserve and that no woman should sit in judgement on a man. She was relegated to a clerking role in the very court where she had sat on the Bench.
She saw the cruel persecution suffered by those who wanted democracy and justice and abandoned her job to become an advocate again, championing the cases of women abused by their husbands but given no recourse to law because of the interpretation placed upon it by strict Islamic interpreters of the Sharia. Her brilliance as a lawyer meant she was often able to out argue the literalists mullahs who peopled the courts. She also acted for families when their loved ones disappeared at the hands of the state. Increasingly her own life was endangered and she was eventually imprisoned and held in solitary confinement... >>>
Person | About | Day |
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نسرین ستوده: زندانی روز | Dec 04 | |
Saeed Malekpour: Prisoner of the day | Lawyer says death sentence suspended | Dec 03 |
Majid Tavakoli: Prisoner of the day | Iterview with mother | Dec 02 |
احسان نراقی: جامعه شناس و نویسنده ۱۳۰۵-۱۳۹۱ | Dec 02 | |
Nasrin Sotoudeh: Prisoner of the day | 46 days on hunger strike | Dec 01 |
Nasrin Sotoudeh: Graffiti | In Barcelona | Nov 30 |
گوهر عشقی: مادر ستار بهشتی | Nov 30 | |
Abdollah Momeni: Prisoner of the day | Activist denied leave and family visits for 1.5 years | Nov 30 |
محمد کلالی: یکی از حمله کنندگان به سفارت ایران در برلین | Nov 29 | |
Habibollah Golparipour: Prisoner of the day | Kurdish Activist on Death Row | Nov 28 |