Helena Kennedy at Hay Festival 2011: My hero of free speech

My free speech heroine is Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights lawyer and activist who won the Nobel Prize. She is an extraordinary woman who has taken the most courageous stance against the Iranian government on behalf of those who have been tortured or killed, speaking out, taking up their cases into court and giving voice to the horrors that have been perpetrated by the regime. She was a qualified lawyer, sitting as a judge when the revolution took place and the Shah was ousted. She had imagined that a new democratic era was dawning but instead was removed from her judicial post simply because she was a woman, as the Ayatollah’s men believed law was a male preserve and that no woman should sit in judgement on a man. She was relegated to a clerking role in the very court where she had sat on the Bench.

She saw the cruel persecution suffered by those who wanted democracy and justice and abandoned her job to become an advocate again, championing the cases of women abused by their husbands but given no recourse to law because of the interpretation placed upon it by strict Islamic interpreters of the Sharia. Her brilliance as a lawyer meant she was often able to out argue the literalists mullahs who peopled the courts. She also acted for families when their loved ones disappeared at the hands of the state. Increasingly her own life was endangered and she was eventually imprisoned and held in solitary confinement… >>>

Meet Iranian Singles

Iranian Singles

Recipient Of The Serena Shim Award

Serena Shim Award
Meet your Persian Love Today!
Meet your Persian Love Today!