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Ayatollahs grin and bear Peace
award
By Safa Haeri
PARIS -
The latest, and probably one of the hardest blows ever
dealt to the ayatollahs who have ruled over Iran since
1979, came from somewhere they never could have
imagined: the Nobel committee in Oslo, Norway. On
October 10 not only the Iranians, but the whole world,
was surprised when the committee awarded its prestigious
Nobel Peace Prize to a little-known Iranian female
lawyer and human rights activist, Shirin Ebadi.
The news was such a knock down to the
conservatives that it took them three days before
authorizing the official news agency, the Islamic
Republic News Agency (IRNA), to release an interview it
had carried with 56-year-old Ebadi earlier. And while
the conservative-controlled media almost ignored the
news, radio and television stations in Iran aired it
only very briefly and with more than a five-hour delay.
With the notable exception of Hojjatoleslam
Mohammad Ali Abtahi, the outspoken vice president for
legal and parliamentary affairs, who immediately
congratulated Ebadi, none of the high-ranking clerics,
not even President Mohammad Khatami, whom the Western
press routinely describes as "moderate", had any word
for the laureate, the first-ever Iranian, and Muslim
woman, to receive the much envied award. Hardline press
and personalities went so far as to criticize the
Norwegian judges on the Nobel Peace Prize panel for
their decision, going as far as describing it as a
"deliberate political decision".
"Of course we
are happy to see an Iranian and Muslim woman winning
this prize and we hope to benefit more from her
experience in the future," Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, the
official government's spokesman told reporters. But the
fact that he had added immediately that he was speaking
on his behalf, reflected the authorities' deep confusion
over the issue.
"Thank you, Shirin Ebadi, thank
you. Today, and thanks to you, we all have grown by one
meter," said Mohsen Sazegara, a dissident journalist and
politician just released from prison, overwhelmed with
joy to the point of weeping.
Not so happy was
Assadollah Badamchian, an influential member of the
Association of Islamic Leagues, a hardline group that
controls most of the hawkish Ayatollahs. "If this prize
was awarded to Mrs Ebadi for the services the reformists
have rendered to policies of the West, it must be said
that this is a real infamy."
World leaders
welcomed the award, from United States President George
W Bush, his French counterpart Jacques Chirac and German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, as well as United Nations
Secretary General Kofi Annan and Nelson Mandela, the
former South African president. This praise is in great
contrast to the cold, if not angry, reaction of the
ruling Iranian authorities.
"Why not attribute
the prize to Pope John Paul or other nominees, or to
Mohammad Khatami, who initiated the 'Dialogue Among
Civilization', instead of an unknown person sought by
the justice?" asked one hardline Iranian newspaper,
reflecting the wrath of the conservative minority that
rules over Iran.
Countered Dr Shaheen Fatemi, a
veteran analyst of Iranian affairs and a respected
professor of economics at the American University of
Paris. "No single event, short of Iran's total
liberation from the bloody tentacles of the mullahs
could have brought so much joy and happiness to the
Iranian people.
"This joy is not limited just to
the Iranians; decent and humane people everywhere should
feel vindicated and proud today. Pope John Paul and
former Czech president Vaclav Havel, who themselves were
among those named as possible recipients of this year's
Nobel Peace Prize, have enthusiastically welcomed the
selection of Mrs Shirin Ebad," he said. "It is indeed
significant that the very first Nobel Prize ever given
to any Iranian is a Peace Prize awarded to an Iranian
lawyer for her courageous defense of human rights
victims of the Islamic Republic."
Born in the
western Iranian city of Hamadan in 1947, Ebadi received
a law degree from the University of Tehran and soon
became on of the very few women in a predominately
Muslim nation to sit as a judge.
"She was 26
when, as a young lawyer, I pleaded in the court she was
presiding over and minutes later, I told myself: what a
woman, what strong convictions, what a character and
courage," recalled Dr Karim Lahiji, vice president to
the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights
League and a close friend of Ebadi.
Ebadi lost
her position after the victory of the Islamic Revolution
of 1979 and the implementation of strict Islamic laws,
but was allowed to teach at the university and practice
as a lawyer, defending some of the regime's most
prominent intellectual, student and political
dissidents. For years, Ebadi and two other women,
Mehrangiz Kar, a more secular human rights and family
lawyer, and Shahla Lahidji, an outspoken publisher
specializing in books about women, were labeled the
"Three Musketeers", because they were considered the
country's most active proponents of women's rights.
Lahidji has since been pressured into silence while Kar
now lives in the US.
Accused of distributing a
taped confession with a member of a vigilante militia
involved in violence against reformists, Ebadi was
jailed briefly in 2000 alongside a colleague,
Hojjatoleslam Mohsen Rahami. Ebadi was sentenced by a
closed-door court to 15 months in prison and barred from
practicing law for five years. Eventually, the sentence
was suspended, and she was required only to pay a fine
of about US$200.
Representing many things that
orthodox Muslims are against, Ebadi has in fact all the
necessary ingredients to be despised by them, as noted
by the Norwegian judges of the Nobel Peace Prize
committee, who stated, "Ebadi represents reformed Islam
and argues for a new interpretation of Islamic law which
is in harmony with vital human rights such as democracy,
equality before the law, religious freedom and freedom
of speech. As for religious freedom, it should be noted
that Ebadi also includes the rights of members of the
Bahai community, which has had problems in Iran ever
since its foundation."
"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,"
said the chairman of the Nobel committee, Ole Danbolt
Mjoes. "I hope the award of the Peace [prize] to Ebadi
can help strengthen and lend support to the cause of
human rights in Iran."
In her very first press
conferences and interviews with the international media,
Ebadi said that the prize is also for "all those who in
Iran and in the world [who] struggle for human rights
and freedom", and emphasized that Islamic laws needed to
be modernized, and religion kept separate from politics.
"I would continue my struggle for human rights,
for more freedom and democracy and a reform in the
present laws and judiciary system in Iran," she told the
Persian service of the Prague-based Radio Free
Europe-Radio Liberty from Paris, where she was on a
private visit.
Ebadi also warned the present
clerical rulers that if they continue ignoring people's
demands for freedom, democracy and the rule of law, they
would be forced to step down, and added that Khatami had
deceived the Iranians for not being able to introduce
the reforms he promised six years ago.
"Iranians
are profoundly disappointed. The Islamic Republic cannot
continue if it fails to evolve and heed the people's
desire for major reform," she emphasized, calling for
political, social, economic and civil rights reforms.
But not everyone agrees with Ebadi's views on
Iran. Hamid Reza Taraqi, a former lawmaker and member of
the hardline Association of Islamic Leagues, said, "The
prize is a support for secular movements and against the
ideals of the 1979 Islamic revolution," adding that 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".
But as
demonstrated by the distribution of IRNA's interview
with Ebadi, it seems that senior decision-makers have
heeded moderate voices among the conservatives advising
them to swallow their chagrin and not seek confrontation
with someone who has become and international celebrity
and the focus of the world's media.
"This is not
the first time that political personalities receive the
Peace Prize and will not be last," wrote Emadeddin Parsa
in the Persian language website, Baaztaab, that belongs
to Mohsen Reza'i, the former commander-in-chief of the
mullahs' Praetorian Guards and the present secretary to
the powerful Expediency Council, underlining that the
decision to give this year's prize to Ebadi was also a
political one.
"My interlocutor here is not the
feuding wings of the Iranian leadership, satisfied with
fighting each other over the Peace Prize awarded to Mrs
Ebadi, or the Iranian opposition abroad that considers
the removal of the Islamic Republic as its main concern,
but the winner herself, Mrs Ebadi, who is now the center
of the world's attention, asking her not to fall prey of
the path traced for her by the opposition or the West,
not to become a tool in their plots and propaganda
against the Islamic Republic," he warned, adding,
"Returning to the beloved homeland, keeping away from
political feuds, strengthening legal, social and
cultural activities would be the best way Mrs Ebadi
could follow."
A radiant Ebadi was due for a
triumphant welcome in Tehran on Tuesday night, leaving
from Paris' Orly Airport, where hundreds of Iranians are
expected from all over France and Europe for a cheerful
farewell. The flight will be filled with newsmen and
sympathizers, an ironic reminder of the historical
return from exile of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
25 years ago.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
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