Shirin Ebadi has filed a lawsuit against the US Treasury Department for preventing her from publishing her autobiography in the United States, reports PEN American Center (PEN). The law suit follows Ebadi´s participation at the Human Rights House Network´s conference ´Activists under Attack. Defending the Right to be a Human Rights Defender,´ held in Oslo mid-October, during which Ebadi met the Norwegian PEN centre, a member of the Oslo Human Rights House, and announced her intentions to sue the US government. (10-NOV-04)
Ebadi wants to publish her memoirs in the United States because of severe restrictions on freedom of expression in Iran, where she has been jailed in the past. However, the Department´s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) forbids citizens of Cuba, Iran and Sudan from publishing books in the United States without a licence because of trade sanctions imposed on those countries.
Inconsistent regulations
Ebadi has finished a draft of the book but is seeking an agent and editor in the US to translate and re-write the book for international readers. OFAC regulations prevent her from signing a contract with the Strothman Agency, which wants to work with her and negotiate with publishers on her behalf. “The regulations seem to defy the values the United States promotes throughout the world, which always include free expression and the free exchange of ideas,” Ebadi says. Ebadi´s lawsuit joins a legal challenge launched in September 2004 by several groups, including PEN. The groups want to expose the inconsistencies in the OFAC regulations, arguing that they violate the constitutional right to free speech and ignore Congressional amendments exempting “information and informational materials” from trade embargoes.
Crackdown on Internet users
Meanwhile, in Iran, authorities are intensifying their crackdown on human rights activists and journalists who use the Internet, report Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF). Since 7 September, eight individuals have been arrested without charges. In some of the cases, authorities have targeted journalists and technicians who work for websites belonging to political leaders.
The following is what the Washington Post wrote on Ebadi´s predicament on 4 November:
Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize and praise from President Bush for her pro-democracy work. But now she´s suing the U.S. government, trying to get permission to publish her memoirs here. Blasting what she calls “enforced silence,” the Muslim lawyer says in an affidavit filed in federal court, “I very much want this new book to reach an audience in the United States.”
Ebadi hasn´t actually written a book yet. In her suit, filed in New York, she says she doesn´t want to write it in Iran and have to submit it for “official approval” by the mullahs. But she can´t work with an American literary agent, her attorneys say, because of Treasury Department regulations that impose penalties on anybody who transacts business with Iran, a noted member of Bush´s “axis of evil.”
“It seems ironic that a woman who has been honored by the Nobel committee for her work on behalf of free speech and human rights should find herself effectively barred from sharing her ideas with American readers,” Wendy J. Strothman, a Boston literary agent who wants to assist Ebadi, told us.
The Treasury Department wouldn´t comment on the suit. Its regulations do allow American publishers to reproduce, translate and edit “informational materials” from countries subject to U.S. sanctions. But even advising an author how to structure a book “would be a problem,” says Philip Lacovara, a former counsel to the Watergate special prosecutor who has taken Ebadi´s case free of charge. In her affidavit, the Nobel laureate says the Treasury rules “seem to defy the values the United States promotes throughout the world, which always include free expression and the free exchange of ideas.”
For further background and information, please visit:
– PEN: http://pen.org/corefreedoms/78.html
– ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=225059
-Legal Challenge Against OFAC: http://www.aaupnet.org/ofac/
-Human Rights Watch: http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2004/11/08/iran9631.htm
