SHIRIN EBADI LEFT FOR OSLO TO RECEIVE HER NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
OSLO, 8 Dec. (IPS) Mrs. Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize left Tehran on Monday for Oslo where she is due to receive her prestigious award on Wednesday, accompanied by the Norwegian ambassador to Iran.
The Iranian lawyer and human rights activist is scheduled to give a press
conference on Tuesday afternoon and then take part at two different functions in
relation with the award ceremonies.
A separate ceremony in Stockholm on Wednesday, the winners of the Literature, Medicine, Physics, Chemistry and Economics prizes will receive their awards from King Carl XVI Gustaf in Stockholm's Concert Hall. That ceremony will be followed by a gala banquet for 1,300 guests at Stockholm's City
King Harald V of Norway, who is usually present at the ceremony, sent
his excuses this time, as he was scheduled to undergo surgery for a bladder
cancer on Monday.
But Queen Sonja, Crown Prince Regent Haakon Magnus, and Crown Princess
Mette-Marit will attend the ceremony.
Asked by the French center right newspaper "Le Figaro" if she would wear a scarf, as it is obligatory under Iranian Islam-based laws, she said she obey laws and rules. "When outside Iran, I take off my scarf and when in Iran, I put it back in respect of the laws of the nation".
I want Iranian women to be free to wear or not to wear the hejab", she told the French news agency AFP in Tehran, but added that she is just as opposed to moves in secularist France to ban the veil from schools.
Tagged by islamist vigilante and some ruling hard line ayatollahs as an "agent of America and the Zionist’, Mrs. Ebadi hd been prevented by pressure groups from a conference at Tehran’s Zahra University.
She also received several death threats, to the point that the Interior Ministry offered her a car and a driver.
At the same time, she had been strongly criticised by several Iranian radical groups outside the country for some of her remarks, like that real Islam was not against human rights and democracy.
Though she says she is not a politic and do not want take any political activity, yet, in a speech at the Majles, she praised the performances of the Iranian reformists-dominated Parliament and encouraged people to go to the polls in the next legislative elections due next February.
"Democracy and freedom are not things one would be offered on a golden plate. Nor can they be brought to any country by tanks and canons", she said during a recent press conference.
Asked if the award has changed her life style, she said it had changed nothing except that she feels more responsibility in promoting the cause of human rights in Iran and elsewhere in the world.
Mrs. Ebadi is the first Iranian, is the third Muslim and the 11th woman to get the Nobel Peace Prize that consists of a diploma, a gold medal, and a check for 10 million Swedish kronor (about 1.4 million dollars, 1.1 million euros). ENDS EBADI AWARD 81203