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.
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