One Woman Stands Against the Iranian

Government
In a country that brooks no dissent, Nasrin Sotoudeh's
remarkable solo protest keeps finding unlikely allies.

BY GOLNAZ ESFANDIARI-JUNE 16, 2015

On a warm, sunny morning in early June, Nasrin Sotoudeh arrived at the offices of the
Iranian Bar Association in central Tehran shortly after 9 a.m. The bespectacled, petite
52-year-old was wearing a blue manteau, beige pants, and red shoes. To comply with
the compulsory hijab law, Sotoudeh had covered her short hair with her favorite white
scarf. On the scarf is a verse from a poem by Irans prominent pre-revolutionary
feminist poet Forough Farrokhzad: I will greet the sun again.
Every weekday for the past seven months, from 9:30 to 12:00 p.m., Sotoudeh, a
former political prisoner, has been picketing the headquarters of the Bar Association in
protest of its decision to ban her from practicing as a lawyer for three years. On this
particular morning, she brought along several signs proclaiming, in English and
Persian, the principles for which she fights: the right to work and the right to dissent.

A man walked up to Sotoudeh, explaining that he had come all the way from the
remote province of Sistan and Baluchistan to meet her. He wanted to share
information about a non-governmental organization he had set up in his home region,
and told her proudly about how his group had recently succeeded in preventing the
destruction of some slums after negotiating with local officials. She thanked him for his
work.
A little while later, two men came by to ask for legal advice. Sotoudeh was happy to
oblige, and the two thanked her profusely. They stood for a while with her as a sign of
support even though they admitted fearing official repercussions. At least four
lawyers who have joined her protest in recent weeks have received threatening phone
calls from security officials warning that they could also receive professional
bans. Even so, those werent the only visitors Sotoudeh received in the course of the
morning. Several womens rights advocates and other activists stopped by.A few
passersby greeted Sotoudeh from afar, smiling and flashing victory signs. A man
brought her bottles of water.
Sotoudehs protest was meant to be a one-woman affair but somehow it never quite
works out that way. Though Irans heavily censored media has never mentioned her
campaign, people learn about it from Persian-language outlets that broadcast from
Europe and the United States. Word of mouth and social media also play a role.
People come here from all over Iran, she told me during a recent phone
conversation.
Among those who have expressed public support for Sotoudeh in recent weeks are
Sufis, members of the persecuted Bahai religious sect, and supporters of a jailed
spiritual healer. She has been visited by relatives of political prisoners (including the
wife of her jailed colleague Abdolfattah Soltani) and by Faezeh Hashemi, daughter of
Irans ex-President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who shared a prison cell with Sotoudeh
for a few months. Sotoudeh has also met with parents whose children were killed or
jailed in the 2009 crackdown that followed the disputed reelection of Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad.
Sotoudeh has her own vivid memories of that year. Though she had a two-year-old
son to take care of at home, she joined the peaceful street protestsagainst what many
Iranians judged to be a fraudulent election. Shaken by the scale of the unrest, the
government unleashed a wave of mass arrests. Sotoudeh gave legal advice to some
of the detainees and defended others in court. A few months later, she was arrested
herself, ultimately ending up in Tehrans notorious Evin Prison.
Theres a dedicated Facebook page where administrators post news and information
about her Bar Association protest (including the latest photos) on a daily basis. The
page offers a unique snapshot of a vibrant culture of dissent despite the highly
restrictive nature of the Iranian regime.
In 2010, Sotoudeh, or Lady Sotoudeh, as many refer to her, was sentenced to six
years of imprisonment, convicted of endangering Irans national security and
spreading anti-government propaganda. In reality, however, it was almost certainly her

defense of sensitive political cases that landed her (and several of her colleagues) in
prison. Before her arrest, she had defended a range of student activists, independent
journalists, and dissidents all people the government tends to regard as its
enemies. She also helped child prisoners, convicted on murder charges, who face the
death penalty. Iran is one of the very few countries that issues and executes death
sentences for people convicted of crimes when they were younger than 18.
In September 2013, just before the newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
arrived in New York for a United Nations summit, Sotoudeh was unexpectedly
released. The following month, the Iranian Bar Association voted to ban her from
practicing law reportedly under pressure from hardline officials who dominate law
enforcement and the judiciary. (The association claimed that it made the decision
based on her 2010 conviction.) Sotoudeh says she has good reason to believe that
the powerful Intelligence Ministry was actually behind the ban.
Her interrogators in prison vowed, she says, to prevent her from ever practicing law
again.
Undeterred, Iranians from all walks of life continue to visit Sotoudeh in front of the Bar
Association. Not all are activists. Some are ordinary Iranians who simply want to
express their solidarity.
Others, of course, are eminently political. Mohammad Nourizad, a former hardline
columnist and supporter of Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei but now
an outspoken critic of the government and Mohammad Maleki, ex-chancellor of
Tehran University, are among the regulars at Sotoudehs protest. In late April, Maleki
came with a sign highlighting a state ban that prevents him from traveling abroad.
Right to Travel, Right of Dissenters, it said in Persian and English, apparently
inspired by Sotoudehs own signs. Because of the ban, the 82-year-old Maleki has not
been able to visit his son, who lives in the Netherlands, for more than six years. His
son, Ammar Maleki, told me he cannot go back to Iran to visit his elderly father, fearing
arrest for his critical writings.
The dissident Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi has also joined Sotoudehs protest
several times in the past few months. The regime has forbidden Panahi from making
movies for the next 20 years. But the ban has not prevented him from making two,
including his latest, Taxi, which won the Golden Bear Prize at the Berlin Film Festival
in February. Sotoudeh plays a supporting role in the movie, as one of the passengers
that Panahi drives around Tehran while discussing social and political issues. When
you finally get released, the outside world becomes a bigger cell, she says in the film,
explaining life as a dissident. Either you have to escape the country or start hoping to
go back to jail.
Another of her recent visitors was a woman by the name of Akram Neghabi, who
arrived holding a sign reading Where is My Saeed? The sign refers to her son,
Saeed Zeinali, a student who has been missing since his arrest after a 1999 student
uprising in Tehran. Neghabi received a phone call from her son three months after he
was taken into custody, asking her to push for his release. That was the last time she

heard his voice. In the years since, the authorities have refused to divulge anything
about his fate. She doesnt know if her Saeed is dead or alive.
Sotoudeh has heard many similar stories during her daily stint in front of the Bar
Association. All she can do, she says, is to listen and express her solidarity. We
Iranians have many of these sad stories these days, she told me during a recent
phone conversation. Many victims of rights violations in the Islamic Republic join her,
she said, because they want to be heard.
They want to publicly demonstrate the pain they have to live with.
Her ongoing protest has provided many with a platform to express their grievances.
Her defiance and fearlessness appear to encourage them. Creating fear and creating
courage are both contagious, Sotoudeh says, adding that through ones actions, its
possible to encourage others to rise above their fear and stand up for their rights.
Sotoudeh was a member of the One Million Signatures Campaign, which aimed to
raise public support for the elimination of Islamic laws that discriminate against
women, especially in areas such as divorce and child custody. The campaign was
launched by a group of womens rights activists first online, then adding face-to face
meetings with people in the streets, on public transport, and elsewhere. The plan was
to gather one million signatures and submit them to the parliament to push for reforms.
But campaign members faced increasing state pressure, including threats and arrests
on vague charges. Sotoudeh defended several of the activists in court.
She also took up the case of her longtime friend and colleague, Nobel Peace Prize
winner Shirin Ebadi, who accused the government of illegally seizing her assets in
2009. The authorities claimed that they froze her bank account due to a failure to pay
taxes. Ive known [Nasrin Sotoudeh] for 20 years, Ebadi told me from London, where
she now lives in exile. Shes a fearless lawyer who defended many political prisoners
pro bono.
Ebadi believes that Sotoudehs protest is significant because it highlights the
systematic pressure on lawyers who take up political cases. She said that Sotoudehs
work illuminates the lack of independence of the Bar Association, which has done little
to protect its members from government pressure. More than a dozen human rights
lawyers have ended up in jail or been forced into exile for defending political activists.
Ebadi, who campaigned for her friends release from prison, believes that the
authorities released Sotoudeh who was co-winner of the European Parliaments
Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2012 under pressure from the European
Union.
When I spoke to her, Sotoudeh declined to comment on the factors that led to her
release. You should ask the authorities, she said. She added that shes oppressed by
the thought that other activists, less lucky than she, remain in prison.
The authorities sent her to jail to shut her up, to prevent her from drawing attention to
abuses. Ironically, though, her imprisonment gave her even greater prominence.

The mother of two remained defiant in Evin Prison, even despite three months
of solitary confinement in 2010. After prison authorities ordered female inmates to
wear the chador, an all-enclosing garment described in the Islamic Republic as the
superior hijab, Sotoudeh refused to comply, describing this as illegal. She refused to
put it on even after authorities banned visits from her family in retaliation.
Sotoudeh went on hunger strike five times to protest against prison conditions and her
unjust imprisonment. When she learned that authoritieshad banned her then-12-yearold daughter from leaving the country, Sotoudeh stopped eating for 50 days. She said
she was determined to go on until the end. Authorities gave in and reversed the ban
on her daughter (who currently still lives in Iran).
Now that shes out of jail, Sotoudeh is determined to continue her fight for justice. She
has decided that stubborn resistance is her only choice.
Her husband, Reza Khandan, recalls his fear that the authorities would try to break her
during her imprisonment. Strange things happen in prison, said Khandan, who was
himself threatened by authorities for informing the public about Sotoudehs plight.
On his own popular Facebook page, Khandan often wrote detailed accounts of his
prison meetings with Sotoudeh and the conditions she had to endure. Her refusal to
submit to the demands of her jailers ultimately turned her into Irans most famous
political prisoner. In Iran, where the authorities have so little tolerance for dissent,
[s]omeone who insists on [his or her] rights is turned into a hero, Khandan
said. He explained that he drives Sotoudeh to her daily protest while she reads in the
car. Reading is her favorite hobby, although her picketing, activism, and her duties as
a mother dont leave her much time for books. These days everyones busy with their
cellphones and digital tools, including myself, but my wife remains faithful to paper, he
said.
So why have the authorities allowed her to continue protesting? Since the election of
the self-proclaimed moderate Rouhani, the atmosphere has eased a bit, activists say.
Even so, Sotoudeh has been briefly detained and interrogated on several occasions
since her release in 2013.
Last October, she was detained while protesting in Tehran against a series of acid
attacks that targeted young women in the central city of Isfahan, apparently because
they were not properly veiled. Sotoudeh later said that the police kept her in detention
for seven hours, threatening to charge her with the crime of moharebeh, or hostility to
God. It is a capital offense. (The police didnt follow through on the threat.)
She has been arrested twice since then. The last time they detained me, she said, I
warned them that if they arrested me one more time without a judicial order, I would
start protesting in front of the Intelligence Ministry.
Aside from these incidents, the authorities have not actively moved to disrupt her
protest, apparently because of her high profile and the widespread support she enjoys
inside and outside the country. Sotoudeh thinks that the authorities fear negative
publicity and shes probably right.

Members of the Bar Association have attempted to persuade Sotoudeh to end her
protest. So far, despite meeting with her several times, theyve failed. She says they
greet her on the steps of the building where she stands every day with her signs;
some privately express regret about the ban.
Like millions of Iranians, the mother of two has been closely following the ongoing
nuclear negotiations between Iran and the United States and other major global
powers. She says any deal that will remove the threat of war and lift sanctions that
have made life so hard for Iranians would be a positive step. If the country can have
positive interaction with the world and respect international norms, then theres hope
that it can act the same way domestically and solve its internal problems rationally and
through dialogue, she said.
Sotoudeh added that a deal is not likely to have much positive impact on the human
rights situation. Real change can come only if activists have room to work and
campaign, she says. Right now it seems unlikely that the powerful hardliners who
wield such enormous influence over the machinery of the Iranian state will ever allow
that to happen. But Sotoudeh is undeterred. With or without their consent, she is
determined to keep up the fight.
Photo credit: Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images
Posted by Thavam