Almost exactly 40 years after Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, in recognition of his nonviolent struggle for civil rights in the United States, another Nobel Peace laureate, Shirin Ebadi, said she was ready to be arrested for refusing to appear before Iran’s Revolutionary Court.
Ebadi, who won the 2003 prize for her work on behalf of women’s and children’s rights and political prisoners in Iran, said Sunday that she did not intend to respond to the court’s summons because she considered the underlying order unlawful and refused to recognize the Revolutionary Court’s legitimacy.
"In this country, anything is possible," she noted to reporters on Sunday when asked whether the judiciary, which is under the control of hardliners in the Islamic Republic, would indeed arrest her if she did not appear as ordered.
"This is a blatant attempt by the Iranian government to silence one of the few remaining voices for human rights in Iran," said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa Division of New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW). "If even a Nobel Prize winner can be threatened, then no activist is safe."
In addition to marking a key test of Iran’s human rights performance, the summons against Ebadi, who is a lawyer herself, may also be related to growing tensions with the United States, which was reported by the New Yorker magazine on Sunday to have been infiltrating military reconnaissance missions into Iran since last summer to scout military and nuclear installations for possible strikes, presumably during the second term of George W. Bush’s presidency.
Despite Iran’s recent agreement with Britain, Germany, and France to indefinitely freeze its enrichment activities, the Bush administration believes that Teheran is determined to acquire nuclear weapons, although it has been split about what to do about it.
On the one hand, Bush has said a nuclear-armed Iran is "unacceptable"; on the other hand, his administration is clearly concerned about further alienating its Western allies, particularly Britain.
If the administration is divided, so, it appears, is Iran’s Islamic government, which, while dominated by conservative theocrats, is nonetheless believed to be split between more-ideological currents, such as those that dominate the judiciary, and more-pragmatic forces, who favor seriously engaging the West, including, possibly, even the United States.
Ebadi may have become a pawn – albeit one with a strong independent streak – in that struggle, according to Neil Hicks, director of international programs at Human Rights First (HRF), formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.
"It is not coincidental that this summons should occur the day after European Union [EU] representatives resumed trade talks with the Iranian government," he said. "Powerful factions within the government are determined that there should be no normalization of relations between Iran and the West."
"They know that these provocations will create problems," he went on. "Summoning Ms. Ebadi demonstrates again that no one who speaks out on human rights in Iran is immune from arbitrary repression and intimidation by the authorities."
Indeed, the Bush administration itself expressed "grave concern" about the summons Friday, adding that it intended to closely monitor the case. Washington’s statement drew a retort from Pres. Mohammad Khatami, a reformist, who told reporters during a visit to Senegal that Washington was in no position to criticize Iran on human rights.
"Now they must respond to the crimes committed in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and their relentless killing of people in all parts of the world in the name of freedom and democracy and the support they provide to the brutalities and atrocities committed against the Palestinian people," he said, adding that, "as the head of state, I personally guarantee [Ebadi’s] safety and her freedom to continue her activities."
"With regard to her being summoned to the court," he said, "I think there is no significant problem. She is a well-known lawyer in the country. I think nothing has been done to create a problem for her, and she is capable enough to defend herself in the courts."
On Jan. 12, the Fourteenth Branch of the Revolutionary Court in Teheran ordered Ebadi to present herself for questioning within three days. The order, however, did not specify the reasons for the summons but warned instead that she would be arrested if she did not appear.
"It is unprecedented for the Revolutionary Court to summon someone for a private suit and [for them to] be told that failure to appear would result in his or her arrest," she said Sunday, according to published reports. "I believe the Revolutionary Court has diverted from the principles of impartiality regarding my summons and I hope it will be addressed by the judicial authorities."
HRW’s Whitson echoed Ebadi’s suggestion that the summons was highly irregular. "At minimum, the Iranian government should specify the legal basis for summoning Ebadi," she said. "That’s a basic principle of due process."
Like King, Ebadi has been the target of frequent threats and intimidation, particularly since she gained international recognition after being awarded the Nobel Prize. In December 2003, she was attacked and physically harmed by a right-wing zealot while she was delivering a lecture at al-Zahra University in Teheran.
The founder of the Center for Defense of Human Rights, Ebadi has defended political prisoners and dissidents, including most recently, Ruzbeh Mir-Ebrahimi, one of a number of prominent bloggers and journalists who have been detained and tortured by the regime in recent months.
Hicks noted that Ebadi’s summons, the specific basis for which is still unknown, follows a wave of intensifying repression against perceived dissidents in the wake of a conservative sweep of last February’s parliamentary elections. Scores of reformist papers and other periodicals, many of them allied with Khatami, have been closed over the year.
(Inter Press Service)
