2023-10-29 17:51:10
by Viviana Mazza
The daughter’s complaint on Instagram. The human rights lawyer dedicated the “Civil Courage” award she received in New York on Tuesday to the young woman who ended up in a coma while she was not wearing a veil. That same evening the news of his death arrived
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
NEW YORK — Lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh received the “Civil Courage Prize” last Tuesday in New York. The Wilson Center scholar Haleh Esfandiari (also imprisoned in Iran years ago) collected it on her behalf, because Nasrin cannot leave Iran. But the Iranian activist had sent a video, in which she dedicated the prize to the “Woman, Life and Freedom” movement born after the killing of Mahsa Amini and offered it in particular to Armita Geravand and her mother. On Sunday morning, at the funeral of Armita, the girl who mysteriously ended up in a coma and then died while she was not wearing a veil in the Tehran subway, there was also Nasrin Sotoudeh. That same evening the news of the young woman’s death arrived. Sources close to the activist confirmed to the Courier that she was brutally beaten by Iranian security forces. Nasrin’s daughter Mehraveh Khandan, who is studying abroad, wrote on Instagram that her mother had been arrested. The family has not heard from the family since.
The lawyer
Sotoudeh, 60, is one of the very few human rights lawyers who remained in the country after the 2009 repression: she has defended minors on death row, student activists, Kurds, Bahai activists and those of the “One Million Signatures” campaign and the so-called «girls from via Revolution» who refused to wear the veil starting from the courageous protest of Vida Movahedi who rolled hers around a stick and waved it in the street like a flag. Director Jafar Panahi immortalized her in his documentary «Taxi».
«The movement is not dead»
«This award is for the vast movement Woman, Life, Freedom, for the women who spontaneously raised themselves from the oppressive yoke of patriarchy – said Nasrin in the video shown in New York -. And obviously defending one’s rights led to the loss of many lives. Protesters had their eyes gouged out to deny them sight. But their eyes multiplied into thousands of other eyes, so that the world could witness this battle of women and men for a simple, ordinary life.”
“Make sure they know that the movement is not dead, that it is continuing”: this is the message that Sotoudeh asked her friend Haleh Esfandiari to convey to the audience gathered for the Civil Courage Award. Sotoudeh is a leader of the women’s movement in Iran, just like Narges Mohammadi, winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. This is not lost on the regime, which is why they both received very harsh sentences. At the same time, both constitute an important link between the past and present battles of women in Iran, but they are not only fighting against gender discrimination, but for a more just society for all. Despite the regime telling them not to do so, gave interviews to foreign media about the political prisoners she represented after 2009, as she also did with Corriere. Her ongoing relationship with the world outside Iran is linked to the fact that Sotoudeh sees Iran’s struggle as part of a global movement.
The sentences
In 2011 she was sentenced to six years in prison, five of which for “threatening national security” and one for appearing without a veil in a video (she ultimately served three). The video under accusation dates back to two years earlier: short hair, glasses, sitting at the desk, with her body hidden in a large black jacket, Nasrin thanked the Bolzano organization Human Rights International for having awarded her the 2008 Human Rights Award. Also in that case she had not been able to collect it in person because her passport had been confiscated while she was preparing to leave Tehran airport. However, she had sent that video, which a supporter then spread on YouTube. Once after an interview, we asked Nasrin if we could photograph her, she nodded. Noticing that she was not wearing a veil, we asked her if it wasn’t dangerous, but she replied that by law it is mandatory to wear it in public, not in private. She was arrested again in June 2018, for having represented the “girls of via Revolution” who had refused to wear the veil, and sentenced to 38 and a half years in prison and 148 lashes on charges of espionage, dissemination of propaganda, of having offended the Supreme Leader: according to Iranian law he must spend 12 years in prison, the longest sentence. Yet last February he gave a courageous interview to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour during a leave from prison: he also underlined that the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement is not dead and raised attention on the doctor and human rights activist Farhad Meysami , in terrible health conditions in prison, after starting a hunger strike against the decision to lead other prisoners to the gallows and against the mandatory veil. “In the end, Nasrin’s courage served to free Farhadi,” explains Amanpour.
The family
With boldness, intelligence and calm, Nasrin Sotoudeh has done extraordinary things while moving within the confines of Iranian law. In his bare study there is a statue of Justice with a sword in her right hand and scales in her left. Attached to the wall behind her desk, many small notes: letters of solidarity that were sent from all over the world to her children, Mehraveh and Nima, when she was arrested in 2011. In a letter to her children from prison, a few years ago, she wrote that she missed them a lot, but that they are her motivation. «You need freedom and justice. Every time I defend a minor I think of you.” Nasrin has always been convinced that the price she paid was not in vain. “Being an Iranian woman requires being optimistic,” she once said.
October 29, 2023 (modified October 29, 2023 | 5:22 pm)
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