Ebadi on US foreign policy

[Andras JANOSSY, Dr]

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines03/1210-02.htm

Iran's Nobel Winner Hits Out at U.S. Foreign Policy
Published on Wednesday, December 10, 2003 by Reuters
   by Inger Sethov

OSLO - Iran's Shirin Ebadi became the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel
Peace Prize Wednesday and sent a bold anti-war message to the West, accusing it
of hiding behind the Sept. 11 attacks to violate human rights.

Reformist lawyer Ebadi, who was recognized for her work for the rights of women
and children in Iran, was handed the prize by the head of the Norwegian Nobel
Committee, Ole Danbolt Mjoes, at a glittering ceremony at the Oslo City Hall.

Ebadi slammed the U.S. administration for double standards in ignoring U.N.
resolutions in the Middle East, while using them as a pretext to go to war in
Iraq. The audience included Hollywood couple Michael Douglas and Catherine
Zeta-Jones, star hosts of Thursday's Nobel concert.

"In the past two years, some states have violated the universal principles and
laws of human rights by using the events of Sept. 11 and the war on
international terrorism as a pretext," she said in a prepared acceptance speech.


"Regulations restricting human rights and basic freedoms ... have been justified
and given legitimacy under the cloak of the war on terrorism."

Wearing no headscarf for the ceremony, the 56-year-old who won the $1.4 million
prize for her work for the rights of women and children in Iran, lashed out at
what she called breaches of the Geneva conventions at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay
military jail.

Ebadi said Guantanamo prisoners had been "without the benefit of the rights
stipulated under the international Geneva conventions, the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights and the (U.N.) International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights."

Ebadi, Iran's first female judge before the 1979 Islamic revolution forced her
to step aside in favor of men, said it was worrying that human rights were
violated by the same Western democracies that had initiated the principles.

The laureate said she, like other human rights activists, questioned why some
U.N. resolutions were binding to the West and others were ignored.

Ebadi, who has become a symbol of reformist hope in Iran while labeled a
political stooge of the West by conservative clerics, also pointed a finger at
her own government, urging Tehran to accept that reform is inevitable.

"In fact, it is not so easy to rule over a people who are aware of their rights,
using traditional, patriarchal and paternalistic methods," she said.

Copyright 2003 Reuters Ltd


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