Free Republic

Female students in Iran have been barred from more than 70 university degree courses in an officially-approved act of sex-discrimination which critics say is aimed at defeating the fight for equal women's rights. In a move that has prompted a demand for a UN investigation byIran's most celebrated human rights campaigner, the Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, 36 universities have announced that 77 BA and BSc courses in the coming academic year will be "single gender" and effectively exclusive to men. ... Mrs Ebadi, a human rights lawyer exiled in the UK, said the real agenda was to reduce the proportion...

Less than a year after authorities stormed the offices of Iranian human-rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, taking sensitive documents and her computer, unidentified authorities have now allegedly taken the Nobel Peace Prize medal and diploma from Ebadi's bank safety deposit box, said officials in Norway, which administers the prize. Outraged officials in Oslo say the incident is unprecedented and has sent shock waves through the Norwegian foreign ministry. “This is the first time a Nobel Peace Prize has been confiscated by national authorities," Norwegian foreign minister Jonas Gahr Store said in a statement posted to his agency's website. "The medal and...

Not many revolutionaries dress in a lilac tweed suit but then not many have the charisma of Shirin Ebadi, who won a Nobel prize for her human rights work in Iran and is now on a mission to garner support for prisoners held in her country. Ebadi, 62, made a passionate plea for the West to show support for the opposition in Iran as the regime continued its crackdown on the reform movement, which continued to mount street protests last week. “The European Union should withdraw ambassadors,” said Ebadi, a lawyer, stabbing the air with her index finger, furious about...

Nobel winner says feminism can help IranBy Erin Gartner, Associated Press Writer September 15, 2006 RALEIGH, N.C. --Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, said supporting feminist movements in the Islamic world would better promote democracy than military force. "Instead of bringing democracy with cluster bombs, we should support women fighting for democracy," Shirin Ebadi said through an interpreter Thursday during a speech at Meredith College, a women's university in Raleigh. A lawyer, former judge and writer in Iran, Ebadi spoke in Farsi to about 1,000 people about fighting for human rights...

NOBEL Peace Laureate, muslim and human rights activist Dr Shirin Ebadi has spoken out against undemocratic Islamic countries justifying "oppressive acts" in the name of Islam. Dr Ebadi said some Islamic countries were turning their backs on modernisation and the need for democracy and as a result were creating tensions internally. Speaking today at the Earth Dialogues 2006 conference in Brisbane, Dr Ebadi said her native Iran as well as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Yemen "among others" were guilty of human rights violations. "In these countries, Islamic rulers want to solve 21st century issues with laws belonging to 14 centuries...

Shirin Ebadi's valiant struggle to obtain justice for her clients in grossly unfair Iranian courts won her the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize. She's proud that she's stayed behind in her country to fight the theocratic dictators while so many others have emigrated. Even so, she admits that in a small way she's responsible for the Islamic Republican government that has afflicted her country since 1979. She's watched the mullahs and their friends arbitrarily execute, for political purposes, thousands of innocent citizens. (One was her brother-in-law.) This week, she must know that the Lebanon-Israel war was incited by Iran's surrogate, Hezbollah....

TEHRAN (AFP) - The rights group of Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi has protested at "numerous" human rights violations in Iran, including arbitrary arrests and the detention of activists and journalists. "It must regrettably be said that in the past three months numerous incidents have happened which are obvious examples of violating human rights," said the quarterly report from Ebadi's Defenders of Human Rights Centre. "Students in Arak (central-western Iran), Tehran... have seen their friends being interrogated and jailed despite judicial authorities' promises that they would not be summoned," it said Saturday. The report referred to the students Mojtaba Saminejad...

VIENNA - Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi said on Tuesday she has been repeatedly threatened with death in her home country Iran. Winning the Nobel Peace Prize of 2003 did not protect her from repression, she said in an interview in the newspaper Die Presse while attending the current international conference in Vienna on Islam in a Pluralistic World. I am threatened with death in Iran. Im constantly getting anonymous threatening letters. I am accused of defending western human rights, and working against the interests of Iran. I was already in prison once, and there were two attempted terror attacks on...

THE HEADLINES out of Tehran concern the predictable failure of yet another round of farcical negotiations designed to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program. Meanwhile, a much more dramatic story is unfolding with much less attention. Investigative journalist Akbar Ganji has been on a hunger strike since June 11 to protest his unwarranted imprisonment over the last five years for the crime of criticizing the theocratic thugs who have hijacked his country. Recently, he has been moved from prison to a hospital, where he is said to be at death's door. His condition is so perilous that even his advocate —...

New York, August 3, 2005) - The Iranian government intensified its attacks on independent human rights defenders by arresting prominent lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani and threatening Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, Human Rights Watch said today. On Saturday evening, July 30, agents of the Judiciary, operating under the authority of Tehran chief prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi, arrested Soltani inside the offices of the Lawyers Association in Tehran. The next day, a Judiciary spokesman announced that Soltani was arrested for "revealing secrets relating to the case of nuclear spies." Soltani is currently being held in Evin prison in Tehran but has yet to be...

London, Jul. 31 – Iran’s Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi wrote in an article that the international community should not ignore the plight of other political prisoners in Iran as well as focusing on the case of jailed journalist Akbar Ganji, a Persian-language website reported on Sunday. Ebadi said that while the case of Akbar Ganji was “a regretful example of the harsh situation of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in Iran that has gained attention in recent weeks”, other political prisoners must not be forgotten. She cautioned human rights activists that they must not “forget other political prisoners and...

TEHRAN - A colleague of the Nobel Prize winning Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, Abdolfattah Soltani, was arrested on Saturday, a fellow lawyer said. A group of men appeared at a legal building where Soltani, already the subject of an arrest warrant, was holding a protest and "put him into a car and took him away," Mohammad Sharif told the student agency ISNA. He was not able to say what service the men belonged to and added that other agents filmed the arrest. Alongside Ebadi, Soltani represents the jailed hunger-striking journalist Akbar Ganji and the family of the murdered...

7/26/05 Iran: Shirin Ebadi tells Appeals Court Zahra Kazemi's death was "deliberate murder" Tehran, July 25, IRNA-Appeals Court presided over by judge Alizadeh held a session on Monday in the presence of defendant security officer M.A. and his lawyer, representative of the prosecutor and four lawyers on behalf of Zahra Kazemi's family. Zahra Kazemi, Iranian photojournalist living in Canada, died in custody in 2003. She had been arrested for taking photos from Evin prison. Kazemi's family filed suit with Judiciary against prison officers and legal proceedings indicated that "either her head struck a hard material or the material struck her...

Prior to the second round of presidential elections in Iran, which was won by Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi gave an interview to the Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly, in which she discussed the recent Iranian elections, the status of women in Islamic society, and democracy. The following are excerpts from the interview: [1] "As Long as a Council [the Guardian Council] or an Individual [Khamenei] Screens the Candidates, I Cannot Vote [in the Iranian Elections]" Interviewer: "You must have a view [on who will win the run-off presidential elections]." Shirin Ebadi: "As long as a council [Iran's...

TEHRAN - Nobel peace prize winner Shirin Ebadi made an impassioned defence of her decision to boycott Iran's election, which goes into a second round on Friday, and launched a stinging attack on presidential candidate Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Ebadi told AFP in an interview that she was not voting because she deemed the entire election was illegitimate, adding it was of little difference whether hardline Tehran mayor Mahmood Ahmadinejad or former president Rafsanjani won. "I have protested from the start about the electoral law. For me the only option is civil disobedience and this is the least we can do....

The most astonishing aspect of Friday's presidential vote in Iran is not that the elections will go into a second round but that Tehran managed to convince so many in the West that this is a real demonstration of democracy. All power is held by Supreme Leader Ali Khameni, his Council of Guardians and the small clique of military officers and businessmen around him. The Council disqualified more than 1,000 candidates before the election, vetting only contestants who support the regime's ideological lines. The example of outgoing "reformist" President Mohammad Khatami, who presided over eight years of economic decline and...

"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness." -Dalai Lama By Farhad Mafie November 16, 2003 Hold on to Your Hat! Some days the Persian Gulf is referred to as the Arabian Gulf. Some days Rumi?the great Iranian poet and philosopher?is referred to as a poet from Afghanistan or a poet from Turkey. Some days Sina or Avicenna, Râzi, Farabi, Birouni?the great Iranian scientists?are referred to as Arab scientists. Some days Iranian arts are referred to as Islamic arts...

PALO ALTO, Calif. - The Iranian human rights lawyer who won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize blamed American foreign policy for increasing terrorism. Speaking yesterday at the Stanford Law School graduation, Shirin Ebadi offered no criticism of the government of Iran, which the State Department calls the leading sponsor of international terrorism. She did, however, offer a series of critical remarks about the Bush administration. "As we can see, the foreign policy of the United States in the Middle East has but increased the acts of terrorism, and even in the United States you are not free of fear," she...

DAKAR (IRNA) -- President Mohammad Khatami rejected Saturday U.S. charges of human rights violations in Iran, denouncing Washington's own record in abusing prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba. "Of all the people entitled to speak about human rights, we don't regard the Americans as having the right to talk about the respect for human rights in Iran," he told reporters here. The United States was quoted Thursday as having expressed 'grave concern' over the human rights situation in Iran and potential court action against 2003 Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi. Khatami said, "I believe the Americans' claims of human rights...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi said Saturday she won't obey a summons by the hard-line Revolutionary Court even though she could be arrested, a challenge to the powerful body that has tried and convicted many intellectuals. Ebadi, the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel peace prize, received the summons Thursday. "The manner in which the summons has been arranged is illegal. I won't go to the court," Ebadi told The Associated Press. "A summons has to specify the reason. That summons is issued for somebody without specifying the reason and...