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IRANIANS CELEBRATED WITH JOY EBADI’S NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

By Safa Haeri
OSLO-PARIS-TEHRAN 101003
(IPS)

Mrs Shirin Ebadi, the outspoken Iranian human rights activist and one of Iran’s most respected lawyer won Friday the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize for her work “fighting for democracy and the rights of women and children”, a spokesman for the Nobel Peace Price announced.

“This prize doesn't belong to me only, it belongs to all people who work for human rights and democracy in Iran", an obviously delighted and still surprised Ebadi told newsmen in Paris, where she was visiting.

The news filled Iranians all over the world with pride except for the ruling ayatollahs, who saw the world most prestigious award given to an Iranian woman a deliberate “act by Europe to belittle Islam” and forbade the public media they control to inform the Iranians at home from the news.

“People started congratulating each other in the streets. Car drivers, including taxis, opened lights, horning their claxons, some distributed pastries while weeping of joy”, one eyewitness told Iran Press Service on the phone from Tehran.

The 56 years-old Ebadi, who is married and has three children, is the first Iranian and also Muslim woman that win the award that some had hoped would go to the ageing Pope Jean Paul II or former Czech president Vaclav Havel.

One of the very first women under the former Iranian Monarchy to become judge, Mrs. Ebadi was denied her job after the victory of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and was jailed on occasions on charges of slandering government officials and defending prominent Iranian intellectuals and political dissidents and deprived of professional activities for some time.

The award created surprise all over the world, but particularly in Iran, where people learned of the news from foreign-based radio and television stations or by relatives who called them on the phone or send them e-mails.

The Nobel committee said Ebadi is well-known and admired by Iranians for her defence in court of victims of attacks by hard-liners on freedom of speech and political freedom.

"As a lawyer, judge, lecturer, writer and activist, she has spoken out clearly and strongly in her country, Iran, far beyond its borders," the awards committee said in its citation.

It said she has stood up as a "sound professional, a courageous person, and has never heeded the threat to her own safety."

“This prize belongs to all Iranians and all those who fight for the cause of human rights”, she said, adding that it also shows that Islam was not against human rights and democracy and for this reason, even the clerics must feel proud.

"Therefore, the religious ones should also welcome this award," she said.

“The prize means you can be a Muslim and at the same time have human rights”, Mrs. Ebadi said, with her voice chocked by emotion.

But as the official news agency IRNA reported it in few lines that the evening dailies, controlled by the conservatives refused to print and the radio and television, which are controlled directly by Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, the lamed leader of the Islamic Republic, reporting hours latter, only one official voice, that of Hojjatoleslanm Mohammad Ali Abtahi, the Vice-president for Legal and Parliamentary Affairs saved the day for the authorities in congratulating the laureate.

"I am very satisfied that an Iranian and above all a woman has won the Nobel Peace Prize”, he told AFP. "It is a sign of the very active presence of Iranian women on the social and political scene.

“The fact that a lawyer has won this prize gives us hope that the judicial system will change its methods," he added, referring to the conservative-controlled judiciary in Iran that Ebadi has targetted in her drive for change.

Mrs. Elaheh Koulaie, a female reformist MP and also a human rights campaigner like Mrs Ebadi, said the prize shows the world community that the democracy process in Iran is going forward.

The deputy head of Iran's main press rights body, the Iranian Centre for the Protection of Journalists, also said the prize was a powerful message to Iran's rival political camps, the French news agency AFP reported from Tehran.

Isa Saharkhiz said he hoped they (the ruling conservative minority) “will learn a lesson of how much the values of people who struggle in favour of democracy and freedom of expression are appreciated worldwide”.

Hojjatoleslam Mohsen Rohami, a lawyer and university professor, who was briefly imprisoned along with Mrs. Ebadi in 2000, said he was "very happy that an Iranian human rights activist has won the attention of the international community."

And in a statement given to AFP by his son, Iran's top dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hoseynali Montazeri said he was "happy that an Iranian personality has been awarded such a merit”.

A lawyer for the Foroohar family, Mrs Ebadi criticised the lack of freedom of speech and democracy in Iran and urged the government to immediately release prisoners jailed for expressing their opinions.

Dariush Foroohar, a popular politician and his wife Parvaneh had been savagely killed in their residence in Tehran on late November 1998 by high-ranking agents of the Intelligence Ministry who had also assassinated three other prominent intellectuals and human rights campaigners in Mohammad Mokhtari, Mohammad Ja’far Pooyandeh and Majid Sharif.

She also said she hoped the award would send a message to those in the Iranian leadership who press for nuclear weapons, saying "I hope it will have an effect in Iran. As a person who has actively been involved in human rights, I am against war and conflict, and countries and nations do not need war”, she said during a brief press conference before flying back to Tehran.

"The fight for human rights is conducted in Iran by the Iranian people and we are against any foreign intervention in Iran”, she further said.

"I am extremely happy. This is a great day for reformers in Iran. It's great for her and great for the country," her husband, Javad Tavassolian, said from Tehran, where she was expected to return from Paris next week.

But as the clerical-led authorities ignored the news, messages of congratulations came from most world leaders, including President Jacques Chirac of France and Austrian Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner who called Ebadi "a courageous woman who has earned the support of all women in the Western world”.

"It's a great victory for Iran, for human rights militants in Iran, for Iranian democrats in Iran”, said Dr Karim Lahidji, president in exile of the Iranian League for Human Rights and vice president of the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues, who is a close friend of the Nobel Peace prize winner.

Former US president Jimmy Carter, last year's Nobel peace prize winner, called Ebadi "an inspiration to people in Iran and around the world."

Human rights activists around the world also praised the decision.

"By honouring Shirin, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has recognized the critical importance of human rights and the individuals who defend them around the world”, Amnesty International said.

In Beirut, human rights activist Samira Trad said the Nobel committee "has made a good judgment. It is good for a woman and good for our area."

Jordanian human rights activist Rana Husseini said the award "will promote women's causes worldwide, including Arab and Muslim women's issues."

Committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes said it was an easy decision.

“This is a question of fundamental rights about women, about fundamental rights of children and mothers," he said. "I hope the award of the peace to Ebadi can help strengthen and lend support to the cause of human rights in Iran".

The committee also lauded Ebadi for arguing for a new interpretation of Islamic law that is in harmony with vital human rights such as democracy and equality before the law.

Ebadi is the third Muslim to win the prize. Yasser Arafat won the prize in 1994, sharing it with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In 1978, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat shared the prize with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin for jointly negotiating peace between the two countries.

But Iranian conservatives were not the only ones to be unhappy about the decision, as Polish former president and Solidarity founder Lech Walesa who got the 1983 Peace Prize said the prize should go to the Pope.

“I bear nothing against this lady, but if anyone among the
living deserves it, then it is the Holy Father”, Walesa told TVN24.
The five-member awards committee, which is appointed by but does not answer to Norway's parliament, makes its choices in strict secrecy. It also keeps the names of candidates, a record 165 this year, secret for 50 years, although those who make nominations often reveal them.

The announcements of this year's Nobels started last week with the literature prize going to J.M. Coetzee of South Africa.

The prizes are presented Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896 in the Swedish capital, Stockholm. The Peace Prize is presented in Oslo.

This year's prize is worth $1.3 million. EBADI NOBEL PEACE PRIZE 101003

http://www.iran-press-service.com/articles_2003/Oct-2003/ebadi_wins_nobel_peace_101003.html

Troubled backdrop for Iranian's Nobel award

Financial Times
By Mohsen Asgari in Tehran, Najmeh Bozorgmehr in London, Guy Dinmore in Washington and Christopher Brown-Humes in Stockholm
Oct 10, 2003

In awarding the 2003 Nobel peace prize to Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights activist, the Nobel committee said it wanted to inspire "all those who struggle for human rights and democracy in her country - [and] in the Muslim world".

But the award comes at a difficult time in the west's relations with Iran and the Islamic world.

President George W. Bush last year included Iran alongside Iraq and North Korea in an "axis of evil", and Tehran is sensitive to US and European pressure over its nuclear programme. Alongside many Arab countries, Iran is determined to resist Washington's demands that it end support for militant Palestinian groups.

While some senior politicians on Friday told the Financial Times that they welcomed Mrs Ebadi's success, state-run media barely mentioned the award.

Elahe Kulaie, a leading female member of parliament, congratulated the Nobel committee for its "understanding of Iranian society" but warned that "hardliners" in Iran might accuse Mrs Ebadi of "being backed by western countries".

In the wider Muslim world, Tahany el-Gebaly, Egypt's first female judge, complained that Mrs Ebadi had been chosen ahead of "many fiery Muslims whose actions and positions are a lot more outspoken, but who are anti-American or [against] western policy in the region".

As a lawyer since 1984, Mrs Ebadi, a 56-year-old mother and committed Muslim, has taken up a variety of cases, driven by tough determination and a fundamental belief that equal rights for women and children are entirely compatible with Islam.

She has worked closely with members of parliament and senior clerics to try to revise laws governing divorce and inheritance rights, and to end "blood money" and execution by stoning.

Appointed as Iran's first judge in 1974, she stepped down after the 1979 revolution decreed that all judges should be male. Her growing public campaigning of recent years has reflected a new openness in Iranian society fostered by Mohammad Khatami, the reformist president elected in 1997.

Reactions to her work - with opposition from many clerics within the judiciary and support within parliament and elsewhere - has illustrated Iran's social and political divisions.

In her most celebrated case she acted for the family of Leila Fathi, a nine-year-old girl raped and killed by three men in western Iran some 10 years ago.

The men were captured and sentenced to death. But for the executions to be carried out, Iranian law obliges the victim's family to pay "blood money" to the families of the condemned men.

Because a woman's value is deemed half that of a man, Leila's family faced paying the difference, which was around $10,000 for each killer. To raise the money the parents sold their house and belongings, and were about to sell their kidneys when Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, then head of the judiciary, ordered the state to pay the rest.

Mrs Ebadi had limited success in the case - one killer escaped from prison, another committed suicide and a third has launched an appeal - but she won support for her campaign against the disparity in "blood money" from Yousef Saanei, a grand ayatollah in Qom.

Undeterred even when she was herself briefly arrested three years ago, Mrs Ebadi has long argued that Iranian women, who now claim 60 per cent of university places, enjoy higher social status than their peers elsewhere in the Middle East.

"I see a bright future for Iranian women," she told the Financial Times earlier this year. "Their determination to gain their legitimate rights is increasing."

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1059480508708&p=1012571727088

Big ol' Bumperoo.

Bulgaria Considered for US Missile Base to Deter Iran

2003-10-10
Sofia Morning News

The US government is considering stationing defensive missiles in a number of European countries against a potential attack from Iran, Germany's Sueddeutsche newspaper reported on Friday issue citing State Department sources.

US defence policy specialist Benjamin Schreer of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs told the newspaper that Romania and Bulgaria could be the "first choices."

The daily quoted a high-ranking US diplomat as saying that the Americans would like to develop a defensive missile network with Europeans but doubted whether a deal could be reached quickly by NATO.

Because of these concerns, Washington may pursue bilateral agreements with individual European countries for deployment in 2006 anti-ballistic systems in exchange for economic aid, the Sueddeutsche said.

The US military last month unveiled an upgraded Patriot anti-missile system in South Korea designed to thwart a missile blitz from North Korea.

http://www.novinite.com/newsletter/print.php?id=26944

Montazeri: "happy" over Nobel prize for rights lawyer

Saturday, October 11, 2003 - ©2003 IranMania.com

TEHRAN, Oct 10 (AFP) -- Iran's top dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, said he was "happy" upon hearing of the Nobel Peace Prize win of Iranian female rights activist Shirin Ebadi.

"I am happy that an Iranian personality has been awarded such a merit," the cleric said in a brief statement given to AFP by his son.

Montazeri was once the designated successor to Iran's Islamic revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but fell from grace and was then placed under house arrest for five years in the central holy city of Qom.

An outspoken critic of the regime, he was freed from house arrest earlier this year.

http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=18609&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs

Asefi: Ebadi`s Nobel Peace Prize source of pleasure

IRNA

Tehran, Oct 11
The Foreign Ministry spokesman here on Friday
expressed pleasure over the success of Ms Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian
university professor and lawyer, to receive this year`s Nobel Peace
Prize for defending the rights of children.
The spokesman further said that the award is indicative of the
high status of women in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Nobel Committee on Friday awarded the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize
to Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi.
She is the first Muslim woman to receive a Nobel prize.

http://www.irna.ir/#2003_10_1101_28_178

http://www.irna.ir/#2003_10_1100_26_021

(( A VERY LATE REACTION FROM THE GOVERNMENT OF IRAN ))

One-woman machine who took on Iran's clerics

Award will make her even more formidable

Dan De Luce in Tehran
Saturday October 11, 2003
The Guardian

She is small in stature but a force of nature in and out of the courtroom. Shirin Ebadi is a one-woman human-rights machine, inspiring students through her law faculty lectures, forcing judges to acknowledge contradictions in Iran's legal code and lobbying parliament to protect the rights of children born out of marriage.
She has already embarrassed the conservative clerics ruling Iran but yesterday's announcement from the Norwegian Nobel committee will make life more awkward for the defenders of the country's rigid laws. For Ms Ebadi and her colleagues the peace prize is like a shot in the arm for their efforts. "I think this prize gives me and Iranian people more courage to work for human rights and peace," she told the BBC in Paris.

What must have the hardliners worried is the following: Ms Ebadi has among the vast youth population, who see her as a courageous heroine standing up to a theocratic system. "I'm so happy," said Reza, a graduate student in Tehran. "I am proud to be an Iranian today."

With young women getting educated in unprecedented numbers, Ms Ebadi senses society is changing in ways that the conservative establishment does not understand. "Sixty-three per cent of entering university students are women. They see that the laws are not suitable for the conditions that are emerging," Ms Ebadi, who has two grown-up daughters, told the Guardian recently. "Because so many women are protesting against their conditions, things will have to improve."

Along with a several other lawyers, Ms Ebadi has launched a non-governmental organisation, the Centre for the Defenders of Human Rights, which will benefit from the Nobel prize of $1.3m (about £780,000). "She is one of the most active lawyers in Iran, working to promote human rights for women, children and all citizens," said her colleague, Mohammad Fayfzadeh. "She has performed brilliantly."

There was a time when the 56-year-old Ms Ebadi was fighting a lonely battle. After the 1979 revolution that toppled the regime of the shah, Ms Ebadi was told she would have to step down as Iran's first female judge. "The head of the court told me I could not work as a judge because I am a woman. He said it was forbidden by sharia law," she said.

Now prominent lawyers and MPs agree that women should serve as judges. "Many women are now working as legal advisers to judges. It's only a matter of time before we have female judges, " she said. "We have been fed so many things in the name of Islam and sharia law."

She uses sharia law, which forms the basis of Iran's laws, to argue that there is no legal foundation for discriminatory rules that give women an inferior status. She cites the writings of senior clerics and other areas of the law that have been freshly interpreted to adapt to modern circumstances.

In one case Ms Ebadi has fought against "blood money" provisions that put the value of a woman's life at half that of a man's in financial compensation. "I accept these cases to show what the consequences of inadequate, inappropriate laws can be," she said.

Through her lobbying in parliament and the courts, Ms Ebadi succeeded in her campaign to grant legal rights to children born outside of marriage though they are still denied the right to any inheritance. "I am still fighting to get that changed."

In a country where many dissidents have been discredited or forced underground, Ms Ebadi stands out for her single-minded commitment to human rights without ties to partisan politics or polemics.

She has spent time in solitary confinement and received a suspended sentence of 15 months for videotaping an interview with a former paramilitary. In the interview, the paramilitary described an at tempted an assassination attempt against a member of the cabinet and other methods of repression.

Ms Ebadi, who works late hours in her office alone, acknowledges the threat she is facing. "Defending human rights in Iran has unavoidable dangers," she said.

The most chilling event for Ms Ebadi was when a document leaked out from the intelligence ministry that included names of intellectuals who had been murdered in mysterious circumstances. It was a list of political enemies apparently singled out for liquidation.

"I'm like any other human being, I experienced fear. It comes to you like hunger, you don't have a choice. But I have learned how to overcome this feeling and not let it interfere with my work."

She wears the head scarf or hejab as required by Iran's dress code and though she has no affection for it, she sees it as a low priority among a long list of women's grievances. "There are much more im portant issues that need to be addressed."

Ms Ebadi credits the Islamic revolutions strict dress code and segregation of the sexes at university with opening the door to emancipation. Once the universities became a place where a father could send his daughter without worrying about "moral corruption", society began to change, she said. "There is a saying that modernity is born on the street. And when a woman steps out on the street, she cannot be a traditional woman anymore."

Extracts from the Nobel committee's citation

It is a pleasure for the Norwegian Nobel committee to award the Peace prize to a woman who is part of the Muslim world, and of whom that world can be proud.

As a lawyer, judge, lecturer, writer and activist, she has spoken out clearly and strongly in her country, Iran, and far beyond its borders. She has stood up as a sound professional, a courageous person, and has never heeded the threats to her own safety. In an era of violence, she has consistently supported nonviolence. It is fundamental to her view that the supreme political power in a community must be built on democratic elections.

We hope that the people of Iran will feel joyous that for the first time in history one of their citizens has been awarded the Nobel Peace prize, and we hope the prize will be an inspiration for all those who struggle for human rights and democracy in her country, in the Muslim world, and in all countries where the fight for human rights needs support.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1060839,00.html

Iran's hard-liners denounce Nobel Peace Prize for woman activist as interference in internal affairs

ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer
SF Gate daily

Iran's powerful hard-liners on Saturday accused the Nobel committee of meddling in the country's internal affairs by awarding the annual peace prize to an Iranian dissident.

Shirin Ebadi won the 2003 prize on Friday for her human rights and democracy activism. She is the first Muslim woman to win the award.

"The prize is a support for secular movements and against the ideals of the 1979 Islamic revolution," said Hamid Reza Taraqi, a former lawmaker and member of the hard-line Islamic Coalition Society.

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee, against its original objectives of promoting peace, has turned into a political tool in the hand of foreigners to interfere in the internal affairs of our country," Taraqi said.

On Saturday, Ebadi was the top story on the front page in the reformist dailies, but hard-line newspapers ignored the news.

The hard-line daily Siyasat-e-Rooz gave priority on its front page to the discovery of an Iron Age-cemetery in Spain. Jomhuri-e-Eslami, another hard-line paper, gave the news a small space on page two: "Westerners give Ebadi Nobel peace prize."

Pro-reform figures were more gracious, and the administration of reformist President Mohammad Khatami congratulated Ebadi's win in a statement provided to the AP late Friday.

At a news conference Friday in Paris, where she appeared without a head scarf, Ebadi said she believes there is no conflict between human rights and the tenets of Islam.

"Therefore, the religious ones should also welcome this award," she said. "The prize means you can be a Muslim and at the same time have human rights."

Nobel committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes said the decision was a message to the world.

"This is a message to the Iranian people, to the Muslim world, to the whole world, that human value, the fight for freedom, the fight for rights of women and children should be at the center," he said. "I hope the award of the peace to Ebadi can help strengthen and lend support to the cause of human rights in Iran."

The committee said Ebadi represents reformed Islam, and lauded her for arguing for a new interpretation of Islamic law which is in harmony with vital human rights such as democracy, equality before the law.

Ebadi, 56, was Iran's first female judge and received her law degree from the University of Tehran.

She was president of the city court of Tehran from 1975-1979, when she was forced to resign. Since the 1979 revolution she has been an activist for democracy and the rights of refugees, women and children.

As a lawyer, she represented families of writers and intellectuals killed in 1999, and worked to expose conspirators behind an attack by pro-clergy assailants on students at Tehran University in 1999.

Ebadi and another lawyer, Mohsen Rahami, were arrested in July 2000 for alleged links to a videotape that purportedly revealed ties between government officials and hard-line vigilantes. They were released from jail after three weeks, but later given suspended prison sentences and barred from practicing law for five years.

Ebadi's husband, Javad Tavassolian, told AP Saturday that the ban was overruled by the appeals court and never enforced.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/10/11/international0616EDT0471.DTL

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee, against its original objectives of promoting peace, has turned into a political tool in the hand of foreigners to interfere in the internal affairs of our country," Taraqi said.

I am conflicted. Arafat and Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize, when they are most undeserving. And now, to have an Iranian earn it, when they are most deserving and in need of recognition of the plight of Iranians, seems justified. But, I wonder if this will return legitimacy to the award. Politics is messy.

Remember that these statements made by the Hard-liners of Iran.
They don't recoginze Global society organizations.

You are correct.

They would never rejoice for the cause of human rights.

EU foreign ministers to debate resolution on Iran human rights

11 October 2003
EU Business

EU foreign ministers will hold talks Monday in Luxembourg on the possibility of issuing a resolution condemning human rights violations in Iran, European diplomatic sources said, adding that the EU was split over the issue.

"The issue is not clear cut," one diplomat said in reference to the split in opinion within the 15-member European Union.

Ireland, the Netherlands and Britain, to a lesser degree, are the main countries calling for a resolution to be presented to the UN commission for human rights in Geneva, with support from the Czech Republic from the side of future EU members who do not yet have the right to vote.

Italy, which currently holds the EU rotating presidency, France, Germany, Spain and chief EU diplomat Javier Solana have been more reluctant on the issue, the same source said.

Solana's spokeswoman Cristina Gallach said Saturday that Iran had this week shown signs of "opening up" with regards to human rights during two days of "political dialogue" in Brussels with EU officials.

"There was some small progress," Gallach said in reference to Tehran's stated intent to revise its stance on the international convention against torture, to which it has so far refused to sign up.

The Iranian delegation at the talks, comprised of officials but also of NGO representatives and university staff, also gave replies to several concrete cases, including a list of 30 political prisoners on which the EU demanded information.

"Until now, it's a subject on which Iran said it could not accept intereference," said Gallach.

"It's an important step, but it is a small step. There remains a string of things we consider unacceptable," she said. "We are still convinced that the human rights situation in Iran is very, very bad."

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Solana's spokeswoman Cristina Gallach said Saturday that Iran had this week shown signs of "opening up" with regards to human rights during two days of "political dialogue" in Brussels with EU officials.

The hardliners cannot be happy that the Nobel Prize has drawn more attention to Iran's betrayal of human rights. I know many, many people were saddened that the Pope did not receive the prize. But, the publicity at this juncture, is extremely fortuitous.

Perhaps the EU will be pressured to stand up to Iran.