Asieh Amini

On Friday, the International Italian Human Rights prize was awarded to Nasrin Sotudeh, the first Iranian attorney to be awarded this prize who is on a ban to leave Iran. Her husband and daughter who are outside Iran received the award on his behalf. Nasrin has been the defense attorney for numerous victims of women’s rights and social activists in recent years. Rooz spoke with her after she was stopped from leaving the country as she was at the airport in Tehran. Here is the interview.

Rooz (R): Did you start working on human rights issues by accident or was it a choice?

Nasrin Sotudeh (NS): For years I was active in political issues and journalism. From 2004 however I began focusing on legal work. In the sphere of human rights, I began my activities with children’s rights. Because of my membership in the legal committee of the Association for the Support of Children’s Rights, we faced many requests regarding children who had been raped. I must say that in courts we are informally told that children’s rape is a private issue and discouraged us from pressing it too much. While there are plenty of documents that show that kids are violated and raped at home, 99 percent of the cases face acquittal of the father or the perpetrator. This reality persuaded me to seriously pursue work on such cases.

R: Why? Is this informal attitude because they do not want to award serious punishment such as the death penalty to the perpetrators, or is it because of the male chauvinistic attitude?

NS: It is a combination of both. We should not forget that the judges in all our courts are men. This type of resistance is not confined to our society. In most other countries if there is a man judge hearing a domestic violence or rape case, there is resistance. This is why we are promoting the idea that in cases where a child is the victim of any abuse there must always also be a woman judge present at the proceedings. I will tell you frankly that when I began work on this issue I was shocked at the volume of domestic violence cases. There were two things I could have done: Looked the other way and continued my work unaffected on the pretext that I alone could not change this, or think of ways to get help to fight this social issue. I chose the second path and I think in the last four years we have succeeded, with the help of the media and particularly newspapers, to focus public attention on the issue.

R: You are among individuals who take up the defense of human rights activists. I would like to know your opinion about the impact of law on people’s life.

NS: Professors at the university teach us that a bad law is better than no law. But we used to argue with them that bad laws should not be respected and observed. Later I came to the conclusion that even bad laws should be observed, but that we had to work to change them.

R: You have adult clients and children clients, including adolescents. What is the legal difference between the two groups?

NS: When I want to take up the defense of a social or civil activist or any case that involves an adult client, I first explain to him that while I would do my utmost to defend him, there was a chance that the case would not succeed. But I cannot say this to a child who is raped by his father every night. These children are under very heavy pressure and the resistance of the judge to push for justice is at times is incredible. We do not advocate capital punishment in this regard, but ask the court to issue a judgment that the mother should be made the guardian of the child. The judge then says that the mother has made a fictitious clam so that she can be the sole custodian of the child. So as you see, each group has its own dynamics and peculiarities.

R: Let’s return to your award and the ban on your exit from the country. Why do you think there is a ban on your exit?

NS: According to law, a judge can ban a person from leaving the country only when despite the bail that has been set for a violator, there is a fear that s/he may leave the country and thus unavailable for trial. In this case however, it appears that there is a different issue at stake and that the judiciary is not so much concerned about us leaving the country but is concerned about our return! Some of my clients have even said that they had been expressly told of what options they had: one was to leave. So this shows that what they are concerned about is not leaving the country but about establishing extensive international communications and relations.