WUNRN
AFP - 28 September 2009
Gdansk,
Poland - Three Iranian Women Human Rights
Campaigners
Receive the Lech Walesa Prize
Shadi Sadr (right), Ladan Boroumand (left) and Roya
Boroumand (center) were honoured for their promotion of “human rights, freedom
of expression and democracy in Iran”, the Lech Walesa Foundation said in a
statement.
Sadr, a legal expert and journalist,
is a leading figure in the campaign against stoning as a punishment in Muslim
countries, the foundation noted.
The Boroumands, meanwhile, are in
charge of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation, which on its website logs human
rights violations, and campaigns in particular against racism.
The 100,000-euro (147,000-dollar)
prize was created in 2008 to “reward those who work for understanding and
cooperation among nations in the name of freedom and the values of Solidarity,”
the trade union which Walesa headed in the 1980s to combat Poland’s then
communist regime.
Walesa won the Nobel Peace Prize in
1983 for his non-violent struggle. He became post-war Poland’s first
democratically-elected president in 1990, a year after the collapse of
communist rule.
Besides Walesa, the prize committee
includes former anti-communist Czech dissident and ex-president Vaclav Havel,
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and former Polish foreign minister
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski.
The inaugural prize last year went to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah for his contribution towards inter-faith dialogue, as well as charity work including sponsoring an operation to separate conjoined twin girls from Poland.
________________________________________________________________________
SHADI SADR SPEECH
Ladies and
Gentlemen,
I am extremely honoured that the jury at the Lech Walesa Award has chosen
me as the recipient of this prize. To be accompanied by the founders of the
Boroumand Foundation has added to my delight. To be granted this Prize, not
only bears an honour but an importance. It is
important not only for myself, but also for the battle going on in
Two months
ago, plain clothed agents violently arrested me in one of the streets of
Today I am
very happy to be here and to talk freely about the lack of freedom in
In the last
ten years, as an advocate of women’s rights movement in Iran, I have witnessed
how this movement and other social movements such as that of the students’,
workers’, and ethnic minorities’ have tried to take advantage of even the
smallest window of opportunity to further their aims publicly. The flames of
resistance have been kept alive throughout these years in spite of
insecurities, work and travel bans, imprisonments etc and activists have not
allowed the flames to be extinguished under oppression and tyranny.
However, after
the result of the presidential elections in June, millions of Iranians showed
that they even if they were not counted in the last thirty years, that despite
being humiliated, oppressed, imprisoned, tortured and raped or even killed they
have a voice, that they do count and that they are not dead. They came in their
thousands upon thousands to the streets to make themselves heard. If until now
it appeared that we were just a few who dared to say “No!” publicly, now
millions of people have raised their hands as a sign of final victory and have
said “No!” to dictatorship and human rights violations.
The response
to this multitude of “No’s” was a form of martial law in the streets, beating
people, arresting them, mental and physical tortures, rapes, and finally death.
For three months this has been the practice in streets and prisons of
As a feminist,
I would like to mention once again the issue of rape and sexual tortures of
prisoners, particularly women prisoners, and demand international action. Many
evidences point to the fact that not only in the post-election events, but all
through the last thirty years, rape and other kinds of sexual tortures have not
been sporadic but systematic, used to
intimidate, humiliate, and break the morale of imprisoned women. For years this
kind of torture had been concealed, but now through the public declaration of
its victims and also through exposes by authorities of the regime, it has
become a topic of social dialogue. But this is only the beginning of a path
which cannot be resolved without global solidarity.
Today, all of
us share a global responsibility with respect to these systematic violations of
rights in the past thirty years, of which rape and torture of imprisoned women
is just a part. I remind myself and all others of our collective responsibility
to bring to justice the authorities who have been responsible of such acts of
systematic violations. The voices of the protesters in
Thank you
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