Iranian Laureate Praised in Oslo as Key to Reform

Reuters ^ | December 8, 2003 | Reuters

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Norwegian politicians joined Iranian reformists in hailing Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi on her arrival in Oslo Monday to pick up the award, urging the world to open its eyes to human rights violations by Tehran. Members of the Norwegian parliament said giving the 2003 prize to the Iranian lawyer for her work to promote children's and women's rights would help reinvigorate reformists in Iran, who under President Mohammad Khatami have struggled to overcome stiff resistance to change from powerful hardline clerics.

Ebadi was Iran's first female judge before the 1979 Islamic revolution forced her to step aside in favor of men and will be the first Muslim woman to win the prestigious award when she collects the $1.4 million prize at a ceremony Wednesday.

"The time has come to put some real pressure on the regime of Iran," Morten Hoglund of Norway's opposition Progress Party told a news conference.

"We need to help and support Shirin Ebadi in her struggle in the very difficult situation that she is in," Lars Rise of the ruling Christian People's Party told the news conference, hosted by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an exiled Iranian opposition group. "She is a great hero."

Ebadi, wearing no headscarf in unseasonally mild Oslo weather with temperatures just below freezing, smiled and waved to reporters at the Oslo airport, but did not make any comment before driving off in a black stretch limousine.

Perviz Khazai, Nordic representative of the NCRI, which is listed by Washington as a terrorist group, called for urgent international action in Iran and a referendum on power as a first step to wider democracy.

"There has never been a fair election in Iran. It has always been a choice between pest and cholera," Khazai said, accusing Khatami of showing a democratic face to the Western world while running a fundamentalist regime of lies and torture.

Ebadi, known for taking on legal cases no one else dares touch, has become a symbol of the fight for greater democracy and freedom in Iran, while conservative hard-liners label her a political stooge of the West.