Nasrin Sotoudeh and director Jafar Panahi share top human rights prize

Nasrin Sotoudeh and director Jafar Panahi share top human rights prize

Nasrin Sotoudeh and director Jafar Panahi share top human rights prize

Catherine Ashton, EU foreign policy chief, voices concern for jailed Iranian lawyer who is on hunger strike in Evin prison

The European Union's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, expressed her concern for the jailed Iranian lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh as she received the European parliament's most prestigious human rights award.

Sotoudeh and an acclaimed Iranian film director, Jafar Panahi, were on Friday awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, previously won by the likes of Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. The prize is named after the Soviet physicist and outspoken dissident Andrei Sakharov.

Sotoudeh fell foul of the Iranian authorities for representing political activists and is serving a six-year prison term in Tehran's notorious Evin prison. She is on day 10 of a hunger strike in protest at the state's harassment of her family and is reported to have been taken to the prison's medical facility as her health deteriorated.

"I am following the case of Nasrin Sotoudeh and other human rights defenders with great concern," Ashton told the Guardian." We will continue to campaign for the charges against them to be dropped. We look to Iran to respect the human rights obligations it has signed up to."

For the Sakharov prize, Sotoudeh and Panahi were up against the anti-Kremlin punk band Pussy Riot and Belarusian jailed political activist Ales Bialiatski. "The award … is a message of solidarity and recognition to a woman and a man who have not been bowed by fear and intimidation and who have decided to put the fate of their country before their own," said Martin Schulz, the president of the European parliament.

Panahi, a supporter of Iran's opposition green movement, was sentenced in 2010 to six years in prison and a 20-year ban on directing and producing films as well as travelling abroad. Unlike Sotoudeh, who is still in jail, Panahi was temporarily released after widespread condemnation of his conviction and a series of hunger strikes, but he risks arrest at any time.

Amnesty International said fears were growing for Sotoudeh's state of health. "For three months now Nasrin Sotoudeh has only had visits from her children while behind a glass screen â€" ever since the authorities discovered she had been using a tissue to write her defence for an upcoming court hearing," said Amnesty's deputy director for Middle East and North Africa programme, Ann Harrison.

"The Iranian authorities have imposed a travel ban on her daughter and on one occasion held her husband overnight in prison for their peaceful advocacy on her behalf."

The UK's foreign secretary, William Hague, on Wednesday echoed Ashton's remarks about Sotoudeh and called on Iran to reconsider her "outrageous" and "deplorable" detention.

"I know that you require water, food, housing, a family, parents, love, and visits with your mother," Sotoudeh reportedly wrote to her children in a letter from jail after being denied to meet with them because of refusing to wear a chador, the full-length cloak worn by Iranian women. "However, just as much, you need freedom, social security, the rule of law and justice."

Karim Lahidji, the president of the Iranian League for the Defence of Human Rights, described the EU's decision to honour Sotoudeh and Panahi as a "great victory" for all rights defenders in the country.

"We are extremely worried about Nasrin's health which is rapidly deteriorating after 10 days of hunger strike," he said. "We therefore urge Iranian authorities to release her and immediately stop subjecting her to arbitrary and punitive conditions of detention."

Nasrin SotoudehIranMiddle East and North AfricaJafar PanahiHuman rightsEuropean UnionEuropeSaeed Kamali Dehghan
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/26/nasrin-sotoudeh-jafar-panahi-sakharov-prize

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