This is what happens when you speak out for human rights in the Iranian mullahocracy. From Payvand's Iran News, with thanks to Ana:
(New York, January 16, 2004) – An Iranian Revolutionary Court order threatening the arrest of Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi places all human rights defenders in Iran at risk, Human Rights Watch said today.Ebadi told Human Rights Watch that she does not intend to respond to the summons because she considers the order unlawful and does not recognize the Revolutionary Court’s legitimacy.
On January 12, the Fourteenth Branch of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran ordered Ebadi to present herself for questioning within three days. The order did not specify the reasons for the summons, but stated that if she did not respond within the specified period, she would be arrested. Ebadi told Human Rights Watch she has appointed a team of three lawyers to represent her.
“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 Human Rights Watch. “If even a Nobel prize winner can be threatened, then no activist is safe.”
Anyone want to lay any bets as to how much of a clammour the usual human rights defenders will raise when it comes to someone battling an Islamist regime (Nobel Prize notwithstanding)?
A glimpse inside Tehran's infamous Evin Prison:
http://web.amnesty.org/web/content.nsf/pages/gbr_iran
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/4/prisoninTehran.php
http://www.netiran.com/?fn=artd(1729)
A short bio on the work of Nobel Laureate lawyer Shirin Ebadi:
"Shirin Ebadi, an advocate of women's and other human rights, has defended many victims of human rights violations. In 2000 Shirin defended Mehrangiz Kar and Shahla Lahiji, both prisoners of conscience, fighting for women's rights in Iran.
Shirin Ebadi has also investigated the murders of writers and intellectuals in 1998 and 1999. She was her self arrested on June 27 2000 accused of producing and distributing a video cassette which allegedly ''disturbed public opinion".
"If even a Nobel prize winner can be threatened, then no activist is safe."
All that the 'Nobel Prize' (doled out by an 'infidel' organization promoting an un-Islamic agenda) means to the Iranian mullahs is:
"How do we now silence her with the least press coverage outside of Iran?"
The Soviets had no problems terrorizing and muzzling Nobel laureates like "Dr. Zhivago" author B. Pasternak, or "Gulag Archipelago" documenter A. Solszhenitsyn, and the mullahs are far-less realistic than the Politburo ever was.
If S. Ebadi has any friends left, they will get her to Stockholm quick.
(But then she'll have to watch out for the Muslims there... athough the Swedish government MIGHT be more sympathetic to her plight than the Tehran terrorist claque.)
I wish her well.