Shirin Ebadi ....She refuses to retreat from battlefield

The ‘candle’ I want to hold aloft for you this month is from a country very much in the news for the past few months – Iran. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 -- the first Iranian to receive the coveted award. She has won several other awards for her long-standing struggle for human rights and democracy.

Shirin Ebadi was born on June 21, 1947, in a well-educated family that moved to Tehran, the Capital, when she was just an infant. Her father, Mohammad Ali Ebadi, was Tehran's chief notary public and a professor of commercial law. She earned a law degree from the University of Tehran, passed the qualifying exams to become a judge, and officially became a judge in March 1969. While serving as a judge, she continued her studies at the University of Tehran for a doctorate in law. In 1975, she became the first woman president of the Tehran city court.

Four years later, in 1979, the country went through the cataclysmic Iranian Revolution, and everything changed. She was dismissed, as women were no longer allowed to serve as judges. Ironically, she was given a new job as a clerk in the court she had presided over as a judge. She appealed to practise as a lawyer, but her applications were repeatedly rejected. She used the time to do what she still could do – write. She wrote books and articles.

She vigorously campaigned for the rights of women, children, and dissidents. Anyone who criticized the actions or policies of the government was jailed, and the judges who wanted to please the authoritarian government persecuted them. She voluntarily took up the cases of dissidents and child victims of abuse. One such case was that of Arian Golshani, a child who was abused for years and then beaten to death by her father and stepbrother. As this case gained international attention, Ebadi used it to highlight Iran's problematic child custody laws, under which the custody of children of divorced parents was usually given to the father. In the case of Arian, her mother had told the court that his father was habitually abusive and had begged for custody of her daughter.

Ebadi also handled the case of Leila, a teenage girl who was gang-raped and murdered. Leila's family became homeless, trying to cover the costs of the execution of the perpetrators. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, it is the responsibility of the victim's family to pay to restore the honour of the rape victim. They have to pay the government to execute the perpetrator. However hard she tried, Ebadi was unable to get justice in this case.

Ebadi played a key role in getting the reformist Mohammad Khatami elected the President of Iran in 1997. But, angered by his election, the hardliners began to harass the new President and his supporters. Dariush Forouhar, a dissident intellectual and politician, was found stabbed to death, along with his wife, Parvaneh Eskandari, in their home. They were just two of several such dissidents who were murdered by a team in the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence, who were determined to stop the liberal climate fostered by the reformist President Khatami, who championed freedom of speech.

In 2000, Ebadi was accused of manipulating the videotaped confession of Amir Farshad Ebrahimi, who confessed his involvement in attacks against members of President Khatami's Cabinet. Although Ebadi clarified that she had only videotaped Ebrahimi's confessions to present them to the court and to the President, she and another lawyer were sentenced to five years in jail and their law licenses were suspended. The Islamic judiciary's supreme court later vacated the sentences.

Ebadi helped in the drafting of the original text of a law against physical abuse of children, which was passed by the Iranian Parliament in 2002. Encouraged by this gain, women members of Parliament asked Ebadi to draft a law explaining how a woman's right to divorce her husband was in line with Islamic Law. When Ebadi presented the Bill in Parliament, the male members made her leave the building.  

Because of threats against her and her family, she has lived in exile in London since 2009. She was recently named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time magazine. Writing in Time, Jody Williams, another Nobel Peace Prize laureate, says, ‘My Nobel sister Shirin Ebadi is one of the most steadfast, determined women I know…She ended up living in exile, but she has never retreated.’

Blurb

In 1979, Iran went through the cataclysmic Revolution, and everything changed. Shirin Ebadi was dismissed as a judge as women were no longer allowed to serve in the post.

In a country where human rights activists were murdered, Ebadi steadfastly campaigned for the rights of women, children, and dissidents.