WUNRN
June 26, 2009
IRAN: Threats of legal proceedings against Nobel Prize winner Shirin
Ebadi for international human rights advocacy
Paris-Geneva, June
26, 2009. The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint
programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World
Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), expresses its utmost concern regarding the
threats of judicial prosecution against Ms. Shirin Ebadi, human rights
lawyer, co-founder of the Defenders of Human Rights Centre (DHRC), and Nobel
Prize winner.
The Iranian official media have recently circulated an unsigned letter
reportedly drafted by lawyers, university scholars and families of veterans and
martyrs, calling upon Justice Minister Gholam-Hussein Elham –who is also
spokesman for the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad– to launch judicial
proceedings against Ms. Shirin Ebadi for allegedly violating Islamic and constitutional
law through her human rights advocacy.
Such threats seem to be a direct consequence of the series of meetings
and conversations organised by FIDH for Ms. Ebadi, with the UN Secretary
General, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the High Representative for
the European Union Common Foreign and Security Policy, the European
Commissioner on External Relations, as well as the President and members of the
European Parliament, to report on the current human rights situation in Iran in
the wake of repression of peaceful demonstrations. Ms. Ebadi also publicly
presented the 2009 annual report of the Observatory in Geneva on June 19,
outlining the direness of the situation of human rights defenders in the
country.
«Shirin Ebadi, the DHRC and her staff have been continuously
slandered and harassed over the past year. The threat of prosecution against
Ms. Ebadi is another evidence of the determination of the Iranian authorities
to silence outspoken human rights defenders in the country. This comes only a
few days after the arrest of Abdolfattah Soltani, another founding member of
the DHRC » said Karim Lahidji, President of the Iranian League for the
Defence of Human Rights (LDDHI) and FIDH Vice-President.
«Criminalising human rights
advocacy work is a blatant violation of the UN Declaration on Human Rights
Defenders that the international community cannot ignore», said Eric Sottas, OMCT Secretary General.
The Observatory
calls upon the Iranian authorities to stop these acts of harassment against Ms.
Shirin Ebadi, as well as all other civil society activists , and guarantee
their right to defend human rights in conformity with the United Nations
Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, in particular its Article 12.2 (“The
State shall take all necessary measures to ensure the protection by the
competent authorities of everyone, individually and in association with others,
against any violence, threats, retaliation, de facto or de jure adverse
discrimination, pressure or any other arbitrary action as a consequence of his
or her legitimate exercise of the rights referred to in the [...]
Declaration”), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as
international human rights instruments ratified by Iran.
For further information, please contact:
FIDH: Gaël Grilhot / Karine Appy, + 33 1 43 55 14 12
OMCT: Delphine Reculeau, + 41 22 809 49 39
================================================================
To contact the list administrator, or to leave the list, send an email to: wunrn_listserve-request@lists.wunrn.com.
Thank you.