Last Wednesday, Iran’s Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi received yet another international award, this time the Price of Tolerance award given to her by that German institute Evangelische Akademie in Tutzing. This is the fourth award bestowed by the institute, a previous one going to the former president of Germany Roman Herzog. As news media announced the receipt of the award by Ebadi, the Iranian state news agency IRNA criticized her acceptance of the award and warned her not to take advantage of the Islamic republic’s “patience and tolerance”. IRNA published the news of Shirin Ebadi’s meeting with Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the foreign minister of Germany, and noted that, “During the meeting a range of issues including civil rights and human rights were discussed.” The report did not hide the its disgust in the award to the Iranian human rights activist and asserted, “This award was bestowed on her because of her remarks that are contrary to the interests of the Iranian nation and her activities in this regard.”
IRNA wrote that that one of the reasons quoted for bestowing the award on Ebadi was that “she worked under conditions of threat” following the “orders of President Ahmadinejad to secure her security.” Still, the news agency warned that Shirin Ebadi continued her propaganda against the Islamic republic by misusing the patience and tolerance of the authorities of the state by continuing to participate in anti-Iranian forums.”
Since the year 2000, the Evangelische Akademie in Tutzing Germany affiliated to the Protestant church in the province of Bayer has been awarding such a prize (to important religious and political leaders, and thinkers and artists) once every two years in its efforts to bring the different political and cultural and religions orders of the world closer to each other.
This new threat from Iran’s state news agency against Ebadi comes after this human rights activist has in recent months received letters threatening her life and been accused and threatened by the state and state-affiliated media.
Last winter Ebadi herself announced that she and her family had received murder threats and called on the authorities to guarantee her safety. She addressed these requests directly to President Ahmadinejad and after the letters went public, the president announced that he had instructed the law enforcement agencies to undertake the security of the Nobel Peace laureate. But following that, IRNA, the official government newspaper Iran, and other pro-state or state-run media such as Keyhan and Fars news agency began a series of threats and attacks on Ebadi. One of the attacks against her has been that she had been defending Bahaism, which is officially banned in the country.
Source: ROOZ
Interesting Blog.
ReplyDeleteGood to see Equality issues coming up.
nice blog &
ReplyDeletecongrats to Shirin Ebadi