Shirin Ebadi

Shirin Ebadi at a WSIS press conference in Tunis 2005

Shirin Ebadi ( Persian شیرین عبادی Shirin Ebadi [ ʃiːˈriːn ebɔːˈdiː ]; * June 21, 1947 in Hamadan ; also Shirin Ibadi ) is an Iranian lawyer , first Iranian female judge and human rights activist . She was the first Muslim woman toreceivethe Nobel Peace Prize in 2003and has lived in exile in Great Britain since the end of 2009.

Life

In 1969, Ebadi graduated from the University of Tehran with a law degree and became the first female judge in the history of Iran . From 1975 to 1979 she held the presidency of the Senate in the Tehran City Court. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, she was driven out of office and initially worked as a secretary at the court, which she previously headed, later as a lawyer and lecturer at Tehran University . In 1994 she co-founded the Society for Protecting the Child's Rights , which aims to improve legislation for children, for example. For example, an increase in the age of criminal responsibility is required, which in Iran is nine for girls and fifteen for boys.

Ebadi sees herself as a democratic woman of the Muslim faith. On the basis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, she advocates an equal role for women in public life, for the rights of children and for judicial reform with independent judges and lawyers. She regards human rights violations such as stoning to death as abuse of religion and misinterpretation of Sharia law . It calls for a pluralistic democratic society and rejects fundamentalist ideas. Ebadi travels extensively to work with international organizations and political bodies around the world to advocate women's rights and a peaceful world. She is married to an electrical engineer and has two studying daughters.

As a lawyer, Shirin Ebadi has taken on cases from liberal people and dissidents who have come into conflict with the judiciary - one of the bastions of conservative power in Iran. In 2000, Ebadi was tried in court for her work as a defense attorney, spent 26 days in solitary confinement, and was given a suspended sentence and a temporary ban. This case drew the attention of international human rights groups to the situation in Iran.

In the fall of 2003, she represented the family of Dariusch Foruhar , an intellectual who was found stabbed to death in his home in November 1998. His wife Parveneh was murdered at the same time. The couple were two victims of a gruesome series of murders that rocked Iran's intellectuals. The suspicion fell on extremist conservative circles who have made it their goal to sabotage the liberal climate promoted by President Mohammad Chātamī - which above all supports freedom of speech . A year later, she became a lawyer in the case of Zahra Kazemi , a Canadian journalist of Iranian descent who died a violent death while in prison.

On October 10, 2003, Shirin Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to promote democracy and human rights. The selection committee particularly praised her courageous commitment to the rights of women and children. By accepting the Nobel Peace Prize without a headscarf, Ebadi set an example. She justified this with the fact that in Western culture it is up to every woman how she dresses. In Iran, on the other hand, she wears the legally prescribed clothing for women, since as a lawyer she naturally adheres to the currently applicable laws.

At the beginning of 2005, according to her lawyer, she was summoned by the Iranian Revolutionary Court without giving any reason . Ebadi refused to comply with this request and requested to be able to answer for a private complaint in a normal court. In doing so, she indirectly denied the legitimacy of the revolutionary courts that existed alongside the normal judiciary. The international human rights organization Human Rights Watch strongly condemned the handling of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate. The Iranian government, however, denied that it was a significant incident as only a minor penalty could be expected.

In October 2005, at the invitation of the Global Ethic Foundation , Ebadi gave a speech at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen , in which she emphasized that those who, citing cultural differences and the relative value of values, refuse to observe human rights are in reality backward oppressors. who hide their dictatorial nature under the mask of culture and intend, in the name of national or religious culture, to oppress and terrorize their own nation. The world will only come to rest and peace will only be permanent if human rights are comprehensive and universal. As on other occasions, she spoke out against military actions against Iran: "Human rights can certainly not be brought to people by bombs".

A demonstration for human rights, in which around 5,000 people (mainly women) took part in Tehran on June 12, 2006, was violently broken up, Ebadi was arrested and released a few days later. Her 2002 with other lawyers - as the 2011-2013 detained Nasrin Sotoudeh - based Center for Human Rights forbade the Iranian Interior Ministry on 5 August 2006. The organization had campaigned for the rights of minorities and opponents of the regime offered legal assistance. Shirin Ebadi publicly opposed the measure and appealed on the grounds that the center was operating within Iranian law. As early as July 2006, she wrote to the international public in a letter asking for help.

On December 21, 2008, a human rights center in Tehran that Ebadi ran with Abdolfattah Soltani was closed by the Iranian authorities on the grounds that it was believed to be propaganda against the system. Taki Rahmani , who was imprisoned for 17 years for political actions against the regime, was to be honored there in an event marking the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights .

Shirin Ebadi in Hamburg's St. Petri Church on September 8, 2009

At the end of November 2009, according to the Norwegian government, the Iranian authorities cleared a safe deposit box from Ebadi and confiscated the medal and certificate of their Nobel Peace Prize kept there. Shirin Ebadi has been living in exile in Great Britain since the end of 2009. From there she continues her human rights activities around the world. For example, she sat on the jury that selected the universal logo for human rights .

When Kurt Westergaard received the Leipzig Prize for the Freedom and Future of the Media in 2010 , Ebadi, also present in Leipzig, protested. According to Spiegel Online, she “apparently saw her religious feelings hurt by the cartoons.” In an interview with Die Zeit , Ebadi said that she was not protesting against Westergaard's invitation and award, but against “that a congress that advocates freedom of expression itself Censorship operates. ”Neither she nor the Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji , who left in response, had been informed of this election. In another interview with the Dalai Lama , she protested against his statements with which he spoke out in favor of secularism . In her opinion, clerical rule could be democratic.

In January 2012, as in 2004, Ebadi called on all Iranians to boycott the 2012 parliamentary elections, citing opposition leaders Zahra Rahnaward , Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who had been under house arrest since the Iranian presidential elections in 2009 .

On May 6, 2012 she received the Avicenna Prize in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt , which the Avicenna Prize eV awards for “pioneering initiatives by people or institutions for intercultural understanding”, especially between Orient and Occident. The prize is endowed with up to 100,000 euros. It is named after the medieval Persian philosopher and universal scientist Avicenna .

Since 2004 she has been a member of the jury of the International Nuremberg Human Rights Award .

Awards

• 1996 Human Rights Watch Defender Award
• 2001 Raftopreis (Norwegian Human Rights Prize)
• 2003 Nobel Peace Prize : This award goes to all Iranians who fight for democracy.
• 2004 Leibniz-Ring-Hannover
• 2006 Commander of the Legion of Honor
• 2008 Tolerance Prize from the Evangelical Academy Tutzing
• 2009 Roland Berger Prize for Human Dignity
• 2010 International Democracy Prize Bonn
• 2010 Felix Ermacora Human Rights Prize
• 2011 Honorary Doctorate from the University of Cambridge
• 2012 International Prize for Understanding and Human Rights from the Ulrich Zwiener Foundation and the University of Jena
• 2012 Avicenna Prize

Works

• Shirin Ebadi et al. a. My Iran. A life between revolution and hope . Pendo-Verlag, Starnberg 2006. ISBN 3-86612-080-X .
• The Rights of the Child. A Study of Legal Aspects of Children's Rights in Iran. (1994)
• History and Documentation of Human Rights in Iran. (2000).
• Speech on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize. In: Women live for peace. (see literature).
• "Until we are free". My fight for human rights in Iran . Translation from English by Ursula Pesch. Munich: Piper, 2016, ISBN 978-3-492-05781-3 .

literature

• Angelika U. Reutter, Anne Rüffer: Women live for peace. Nobel Peace Prize winners from Bertha von Suttner to Shirin Ebadi. Piper, Munich 2004. ISBN 3-492-24209-X
• Katajun Amirpur : God is with the fearless. Shirin Ebadi. The Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and the Struggle for the Future of Iran. Herder, Freiburg 2004. ISBN 3-451-05469-8
• Matthias Hannemann, The Good Propagandists. Iran, the eyes of the world and the Nobel Peace Prize , in: Liberal - Vierteljahreshefte für Politik und Kultur, No. 46 (March 2004), pp. 66–69. - Essay on the function and media presentation of the prize

Web links

Databases

Commons : Shirin Ebadi  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: Shirin Ebadi  - Quotes

• Literature by and about Shirin Ebadi in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography and reviews of works by Shirin Ebadi at perlentaucher.de
• Shirin Ebadi. In: FemBio. Women's biography research (with references and citations).
• Information from the Nobel Foundation on the 2003 award ceremony for Shirin Ebadi (English)

Content

• nobelpreis.org: Shirin Ebadi: The Nobel Prize for Peace 2003 ( Memento from February 12, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
• Violence, Politics and Human Rights Shirin Ebadi in conversation with Nermeen Shaikh
• Fifth Global Ethic Speech: Dr. Shirin Ebadi: “The Contribution of Islam to a Global Ethic” ( Memento from August 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), October 20, 2005, University of Tübingen
• Interview with Dr. Shirin Ebadi on women's rights and human rights work on Iran , March 18, 2011, Bonn

Individual evidence

1. ^ Nobelprize.org: The Nobel Peace Prize 2003 , accessed October 12, 2007
2. ↑ bbc.co.uk: Nobel winner's plea to Iran , accessed on October 12, 2007 (English)
3. ↑ weltethos.org: Fifth Global Ethic Speech by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi ( Memento of the original from December 24, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ qantara.de : Protest against the planned family law in Iran: Free ticket for polygamous men , accessed on October 8, 2008
5. ↑ Amnesty International Germany: Urgent Action (Iran): Nonviolent Political Prisoners / Threatened Abuse (UA-No .: UA-052 / 2007-1)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.   , accessed October 8, 2008 (Google)
6. ↑ Arte : Shirin Ebadi. My life ( memento of the original from February 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Arte series Mein Leben , 43 min., First broadcast on Sunday, July 21st. at 11:45 a.m., broadcast dates: July 27 at 6:20 a.m. 
7. ↑ Police close office of Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi Spiegel online, December 21, 2008
8. ↑ Nobel Peace Prize from lawyer Ebadi in Iran confiscated Yahoo! News, November 26, 2009  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
9. ↑ http://humanrightslogo.net/about  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
10. ↑ Media Prize: Iranian intellectuals reprimand Westergaard honor , Spiegel Online, October 8, 2010.
11. ^ "Kurt Westergaard has stirred up hatred" , Die Zeit, October 8, 2010.
12. ^ Dialogue with Three Nobel Laureates , youtube.de
13. ^ Nobel Laureate In Iran Joins Boycott Of Elections , nytimes.com, February 18, 2004.
14. ^ Ebadi Calls for a Campaign to Release Opposition Leaders International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran on January 26, 2011
15. ↑ Homepage of the Avicenna Prize Association: http://avicenna-preis.com/ accessed on January 5, 2012
16. ↑ cf. http://avicenna-preis.com/aktuelles.htm accessed on January 5, 2012
17. ↑ BR online : Tolerance price for Shirin Ebadi: Human rights in times of violence  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
18. ↑ Roland Berger Foundation on the 2009 award
19. ↑ dpa March 3, 2010
20. ^ List of honorary doctors
21. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from July 5, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
22. ↑ http://www.zwiener-stiftung.de/aktuell.html
23. ↑ WORLD: Awards: Shirin Ebadi honored with Avicenna Prize . In: THE WORLD . May 7, 2012 ( welt.de [accessed on March 12, 2020]).