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| TARGET: Shirin Ebadi, who takes on sensitive legal cases in Tehran, has seen her center closed. Scott Peterson/Getty Images |
Iran turns up pressure on rights activists
Campaigners are often seen as a threat to national security and influenced by Western interests.
By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the March 3, 2009 edition
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Reporter Scott Peterson discusses how much more advanced the status of Iranian women is in comparison to many of their counterparts in the region.
Tehran, Iran; and Istanbul, Turkey - The black and red graffiti painted outside the apartment and offices of Nobel Peace Prize-winner Shirin Ebadi on Jan. 1 has yet to be removed.
She has left it up "so everyone will see it," says Ms. Ebadi, adding that the challenge "makes me stronger."
That choice probably suits the hostile crowd of militants who painted the messages while police watched – their handiwork part of a bid to unsettle Iran's best-known rights lawyer.
"Ebadi, death to the witch of America," reads the scrawl on the garage door, the word "witch" misspelled in Farsi. Nearby is another message: "Shame on the holder of the pen of the enemy."
That action, along with the closing of Ebadi's Center for Human Rights Defenders in late December, is the latest volley in a broader challenge by authorities against campaigners of all kinds, from labor leaders and journalists to students and women trying to redress discriminatory laws by gathering 1 million signatures.
For more than two years, Iranian security chiefs have stated that the biggest threat to the Islamic Republic is from inside Iran. Activists are often accused of endangering "national security," and in the pay of arch foes Israel or the US to foment a "Velvet Revolution" against the regime.
"The people who accuse me of working with the US know themselves that it is not right," says Ebadi in an interview, noting that she has received numerous threats to her life from hard-line critics.
But the lawyer has often been critical of the US, too, over abuses at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.
The tens of millions of dollars the US has set aside in recent years for "pro-democracy" activities have instead "damaged the human rights situation in Iran," says Ebadi, by giving authorities a pretext for suspicion.
"This will not lead me to leave Iran or to give up my work," says Ebadi. "What I am doing is based on the law, and they can't stop me…. A government that is powerful is more open to criticism. [This one] is scared."
Some analysts in Iran say the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has reason to worry, given years of Washington talk about "regime change" in Iran. The seed cash for today's American "pro-democracy" money, in fact, was $18 million pushed by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) in 1996 for a "covert CIA operation" aimed at toppling the government.
Home-grown activists
"The problem is, Ebadi and those people going for the signatures are not seen as home-grown activists," says Seyed Mohammad Marandi, head of North American Studies at the University of Tehran. "[People] think Western interests are behind it…. So they feel they have no place here. They are seen as people getting funding from abroad."
"They don't like activism at all, and not just women, but trade unions and others," says a European diplomat in Tehran, who requested anonymity. "They want to tell the world: 'You can put pressure on us, it does not matter.' "
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