The Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate and human rights activist Shirin Ebadi says that she has received numerous death threats recently. The threats have been presented in the form of notes on the door to the building where she has her office. One of the notes simply states that she will soon die. -The threats against me and my family have become more serious, warns Ebadi. (25-APR-08)

Based on a news release from the Norwegian news agency NTB, and supplemented by the Guardian Weekly´s 25 April issue article, the article published here has been translated and prepared for publication by HRH F / Niels Jacob Harbitz. Photo of Ebadi: HRH F / Harbitz.

Following the threats, Iran´s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has intervened on Ebadi´s behalf, ordering the police to investigate the death threats and provide protection. “It is the police´s duty to preserve the security and safety of all Iranian citizens,” state radio quoted him as saying. Ebadi´s public response to the police was clear: “Those who wish me dead do not have any personal animosity. They are those who are against my ideas, so finding the person or people who sent me the threatening letters is not a difficult task.”

-So we kill her, so you understand
Ebadi, 60, explains that a letter she recently received also threatened to kill her daughter and accused Ebadi of having links to the Bahais, a minority religious sect regarded as heretics by Iranian authorities. “We told you to give up your un-Islamic and Bahai-based faith, but you have continued serving the foreigners and the Bahais, and even your daughter is involved. So we kill her, so you understand,” the hand-written letter allegedly read. Another message, pinned to the door of Ebadi´s office, told her to “watch your tongue … or you will be avenged”. Yet other threats have warned her against making speeches abroad.   

Bureaucratic harassment
Ebadi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, is also a Rafto Human Rights Award Laureate. In a letter to the HRH Network, dated 16 September last year, she elaborated on the difficult situation she and other human rights defenders work under in Iran. She particularly mentioned that journalists and human rights defenders are constantly harassed by the government and that at any time, many among these two groups of professionals are in prison. She also drew attention to the harassment imposed for instance on her own Center for Defense of Human Rights through the seemingly endless bureaucratic harassment of failing to register the office, and thus, effectively preventing it from operating legally.

-The success of the Human Rights House Network is our success
Ebadi is a close friend of the HRH Network. Following her first visit to the Human Rights House in Oslo in 2004, as keynote speaker at the HRH Network´s 10th anniversary conference ´Activists Under Attack: Defending the Right to be a Human Rights Defender,´ Ebadi has returned several times. In the above mentioned letter to the HRH Network, emphasizing its effectiveness in supporting her own and other human rights defenders´ work around the world. ´The success of the Human Rights House Network is our success,´ she concluded her letter.