"A NOBLE WOMAN CARRIES TORCH FOR DEMOCRACY IN IRAN" BY AMIR TAHERI, WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE
by Amir Taheri
WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE
October 13, 2003
Khaleh Shirin bord! (Auntie Shirin has won!).
Iranian university students were spreading this message by telephone, the Internet and in slogans on the walls of Tehran after Persian-language broadcasts from London and Washington on Friday announced that Shirin Ebadi got the Nobel Peace Prize.
Iran's pro-democracy movement, now going through a rough patch, couldn't have hoped for better news. Mrs. Ebadi, a 56-year old lawyer and human-rights campaigner, is one of their own. She immediately used the platform given her by the award to call for all prisoners of conscience to be released in Iran.
"I see this prize as a message to the democracy movement in Iran," Mrs. Ebadi told me in a phone conversation from Paris, where she was attending a conference on human rights. "The message is clear: the democratic world is on your side. Keep fighting!"
She said the prize must be seen as acknowledgment that it is possible for Muslims to be democrats. "There need be no contradiction between being a Muslim and a democrat," she said. "I am proud to be a Muslim while believing that democracy is the best system."
Mrs. Ebadi's win has shocked the hard-line Khomeinists. The state-controlled media tried to ignore the news and ended up by announcing it in a 12-word item. That was followed by a barrage of personal attacks on Mrs. Ebadi. One leading Khomeinist, Assadallah Badamchian, who leads the hard-line Islamic Coalition Council, called Mrs. Ebadi "an agent of American and Zionist conspiracies."
Mrs. Ebadi's Nobel comes at a time that the Khomeinists, grouped around the "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi, are trying to contain the democracy movement with a mixture of threats and promises.
Since July, some 5,000 pro-democracy activists have been arrested and held for varying periods. At least 2,000 students have been "purged" from universities while armed guards backed by professional street-fighters are posted in and around most campuses. All this took a toll on the pro-democracy movement.
Now, however, the democracy campaigners are planning a series of demonstrations, starting with a big reception for Mrs. Ebadi after she collects her prize in Stockholm in December. The laureate is also expected to head a list of pro-reform candidates in the next general election, scheduled for March 2004.
Mrs. Ebadi was a symbol of the modernization of Iran that was halted when the mullahs seized power in 1979. She was among the first women to study law and took her degree from the Tehran Law Faculty in 1967 at a time that Iranian women were asserting their presence throughout society.
In 1962 women had received the right to vote and get elected to the parliament. Three years later, another law abolished polygamy, banned the repudiation of women by husbands, and gave women the right to divorce. In 1968, amendments to the Penal Code established the full equality of men and women as witnesses and opened the way for the appointment of woman judges.
Mrs. Ebadi was among the first women to be appointed as a judge in 1974. By 1978, when the first rumblings of the revolution started, there were 46 women judges in Iran, including one, Mehrangiz Manuchehrian, in the nine-member Supreme Court. There were also 21 women in the Parliament, and two in the Cabinet. Women also served as ambassadors, provincial governors, and in positions of command in the armed forces and the police.
The mullahs ended all that.
The new regime canceled many of the laws passed in favor of women and announced that women were no longer allowed to sit as judges or practice law. Women were also thrown out of the military, the police, the diplomatic service and other professions that required contacts with men. In 1982 the new regime passed the Islamic Dress Act that made the hijab mandatory for all female humans above the age of six.
Having lost her job as a judge, Mrs. Ebadi was not allowed to work even as a lawyer until the ban on female barristers was lifted in 1990. Since the teaching profession was still open to women, partly because men had been sent to the war against Iraq in the 1980s, Mrs. Ebadi was able to obtain a post as university lecturer.
That was the start of her comeback. She took on the defense of the defenseless, including beaten women, Afghan and Iraqi refugees exploited by their employers, minorities, especially Bahais and Jews, terrorized because of their faith, and children raped in prisons by mullahs.
In 1999 she spent nine weeks in the notorious Evin Prison, where an estimated 100,000 men, women and children have perished since 1979.
Using a teaspoon she carved this message on the wall of her cell: "Time and place are imposed on us. Let's be patient!"
Mr. Taheri is former executive editor of Kayhan, Iran's largest daily newspaper.
Updated October 13, 2003
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