Posted on 12/10/2003 3:35:36 PM PST by Stultis
Thursday, December 11, 2003 at 07:00 JST
OSLO — Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, seized the opportunity to accuse the United States of using the Sept 11 attacks to justify violating international law and human rights.
"In the past two years, some states have violated the universal principles and laws of human rights by using the events of Sept 11 and the war on international terrorism as a pretext," Ebadi said in her acceptance speech Wednesday, without mentioning the United States by name.
"International human rights laws are breached not only by their recognized opponents, but these principles are also violated in Western democracies," she added.
Ebadi, 56, received the prize from chairman of the Nobel Committee Ole Mjoes at a formal ceremony in Oslo's City Hall, marked by the absence of King Harald V of Norway who was recovering from cancer surgery.
The ceremony was attended by Queen Sonja, Crown Prince Regent Haakon Magnus, and Crown Princess Mette-Marit, among others.
In her speech, Ebadi also commented on prisoners detained at a U.S. base in Cuba, saying they were "without the benefit of the rights stipulated under the international Geneva conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the (U.N.) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."
Chosen for her democracy-building efforts and her work to improve human rights and women's rights in Iran, one of three countries in what U.S. President George Bush has called the "axis of evil", Ebadi also pointed to selective application of U.N. decisions.
"Why is it that some decisions and resolutions of the U.N. Security Council are binding, while some other resolutions of the council have no binding force?" she asked, pointing to the different treatment of Israel and Iraq.
"Why is it that in the past 35 years, dozens of U.N. resolutions concerning the occupation of the Palestinian territories by the state of Israel have not been implemented properly?" she continued.
"Yet, in the past 12 years, the state and people of Iraq were subjected to attack, military assault, economic sanctions, and, ultimately, military occupation," she said.
Some observers had expected Ebadi to focus more of her criticism on her own country's regime, rather than on the U.S. and the West, but Norwegian experts said she wanted to prove that she is not in the service of the West, as some Iranian extremists allege.
"I think Ebadi's main intention was not to appear as a puppet of the United States," Stein Toennesson, head of the Oslo Peace Research Institute (PRIO) said, adding that Ebadi's comments on rights abuses by the Iranian government were relatively muted.
Ebadi made headlines when she became Iran's first female judge in 1974, and again when she was stripped of her post by the new ruling clerics of the 1979 revolution, who decided that women were by nature unsuitable for such responsibilities.
But it was when she served as lawyer for two of several dissidents murdered in 1999 — in a spate of grisly killings that was eventually pinned on "rogue" agents from Iran's intelligence ministry — that she really provoked the ire of the country's hardliners.
In June 2000, she was jailed for three weeks, and then a closed-door court handed her a suspended prison sentence of five years and barred her from practicing law.
Ebadi's appearance at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony Wednesday continued to provoke harsh reactions from her critics, who have even issued death threats over her decision to accept her award without a headscarf, or hijab.
Iranian women are required by law to keep their heads covered, even when traveling outside the country.
Iran's official television, which barely mentioned the Peace Prize ceremony Wednesday, showed only an archive photo of Ebadi with a headscarf.
Ebadi reiterated that Islam and human rights were compatible.
"The discriminatory plight of women in Islamic states has its roots in the patriarchal and male-dominated culture prevailing in these societies, not in Islam," she said.
According to press reports, Ebadi plans to donate her prize money to human rights groups in Iran, in particular to those concerned with children and prisoners of conscience. (Wire reports)
That's both small minded and short-sighted. We want Iran to be a free country. Anybody working to free it has my support (even if I have to shake my head in sad disgust at their lashing out at the very font of the liberalism that justifies their goals).
The Nobel Peace Prize winner is small minded and shortsighted, so I guess I'm in good company.
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