Word: ebadi
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Four years ago, during a similarly sultry Tehran summer, I had an argument with Shirin Ebadi about whether Iranians should vote in their country's presidential elections. The human-rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate believed that Iranians should boycott the vote. She argued coolly that people's participation lent legitimacy to an undemocratic regime's flawed electoral process. At the time, I found her view frustratingly staid, the stance of someone who had lost touch with young people's immediate concerns. I felt that boycotting elections made a prize of abstract ideals over daily realities. I had experienced...
That summer of 2005, many Iranians actually heeded Ebadi's call and boycotted the vote. This helped the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the firebrand leader who proceeded to gut the country's economy and sully Iran's reputation in the world. Reformist politicians, whose candidates had fared badly at the polls, told moderate Iranians that they were to blame for Ahmadinejad's victory. If the so-called silent majority - the millions of middle-class, educated Iranians who seek more freedom and economic opportunity - had voted, the emerging wisdom went, then the country wouldn't have been lost to the lunatic...
...ashamed of having voted in Iranian elections past, but I have a fresh appreciation for the wisdom of Shirin Ebadi, who from long experience battling the Iranian regime had accurately recognized her foe. And I am still not certain that I will boycott elections in the future. If people had not voted in Iran on such a grand scale, the world would have assumed once again that the people had chosen Ahmadinejad as their President. Now Iranians have made their discontent clear, and though their votes have been discounted, their voices have been heard. Ahmadinejad may remain President of Iran...
...While at Northwestern University, she interviewed the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who recently said he applied for an Iranian visa so he could visit Saberi in prison. Human rights activist Shirin Ebadi, Iran's Nobel Peace Prize laurate, also agreed to join Saberi's cause as a defense attorney...
...Iraqi government moved to pre-empt a violent outcry after the killing by imposing an immediate curfew across the province of Najaf until further notice. Wire services reported Najaf police had also shut down shops and ushered people off the streets. Dawa party member, Haider Al-Ebadi, in Baghdad, told TIME that he knew nothing about the incident, and declined to comment on the possibility for further unrest. "I know nothing about this accident, but we are very sorry about it," he said...