A successful judge prior to 1979, Shirin Ebadi lost her position following the Islamic revolution and spent years at home writing articles and books on Iranian law. Finally in 1992 she was granted her lawyer's license. She has been an outspoken campaigner for democracy and greater rights for Iranian women and is credited with being a driving force behind the reform of family laws in Iran by seeking changes in divorce and inheritance legislation. She has come into conflict with the law in Iran on a personal level and been imprisoned as a result.
Dr Ebadi is a popular figure in Iran and a key figure in reformist movement. Despite her criticism of the current regime is firmly of the belief that Iran’s problems must be solved by the Iranian people. “Improving the situation in Iran is solely the business of the Iranian people and not a matter for foreign soldiers” she told the British Pugwash Group meeting on 1st June. Any attempt by the media to represent her call for reforms as a plea to the world for ‘regime change’ would be a disingenuous misrepresentation both of her views and those of the vast majority of ordinary Iranians. “If the US and British repeat the mistake they made in Iraq and attack Iran, the people of Iran will put aside their differences and defend their country.”
At the meeting on the 2nd June attended by over 600 people Dr Ebadi said:
“The recent parliamentary and presidential elections showed that people are distancing themselves from the government. There are 49 million eligible voters in Iran, but during the second round of the presidential elections the new president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won just 14 million votes. When Mohammad Khatami won the presidential election in 1997, 22 million people voted for him. This gap is a sign of the growing dissatisfaction with government.
The first reason for this dissatisfaction is economic – at least ten million people live below the absolute poverty line of $1 a day, out of a population of 70 million. For a country rich in resources, such as oil, gas and uranium, this is a calamity. This poverty is due to wrong economic policies. People are demanding a more advanced form of democracy. People are not free to vote for who they like. The suitability of candidates must first be approved by Iran’s guardian council.
The first step in democracy is free choice and free elections. During the past 28 years Iran’s people have experienced a revolution and eight years of war with Iraq. They are tired of violence. They are looking for reforms. The reform movement has depth. It is a movement fighting for democracy and is not in favour of violence and weapons. Civil disobedience comes at a price, and this means having political prisoners. I want to express my support for them.
What are the solutions? The first is that there must not be a military invasion or bombing of Iran. Any attack would mean that people have to give up their desire for greater democracy. People would defend the security and integrity of the country. There would be harm done to the democracy movement, which has been nourished and continued by Iranians for many years. When governments face a foreign threat they suppress freedoms and those fighting for freedom.
The West and particularly the US expresses an anxiety that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons the security of the Middle East will be threatened. They say that Iran is not democratic and if fundamentalists have access to nuclear weapons the whole region will be set on fire. If the US is sincere, I should tell them that there is already danger in the region—Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons. Its president Musharraf did not come to power through democracy. The only difference is Pakistan is a close friend of the US, while Iran does not obey US diktats.
These double standards show why the people of the world have lost faith in the US. Saddam Hussein fought against Iran for eight years. He used chemical weapons against Iran and Iraqi Kurds. He was a close friend and ally of the US.
The US attacked Iraq under the pretence that it was establishing democracy and because Saddam Hussein was a dictator. Were there no other dictators in the world? Unfortunately the world is full of dictators, but they do not have oil in their country and Saddam Hussein did.
Please do not conclude that I am favour of Iran possessing nuclear weapons – they were not manufactured for humanity’s happiness. No country needs nuclear weapons – not the US, Israel or Pakistan. Countries should cut their military expenditure in half and spend it on the welfare of the people. That would make a much better world. Iran has claimed it wants to use nuclear power peacefully, but the world does not accept its word.
The solution is to establish a more advanced form of democracy so that the world trusts Iran’s word. As a first step people should be allowed to vote freely by annulling the law that allows the guardian council to check candidates’ credentials.
We will defend our country. We will never allow it to become another Iraq.”