By Syma Sayyah, Tehran
There are thousands of hard working
professional women in Iran who go
about their work with great determination, zest and the highest level of
professionalism. At the same time
they remain human, caring, kind and successful. This is the story of one such lady,
Nasrin Sotoudeh.
There are people who naturally
inspire energy. I got to know
Nasrin through a mutual friend, an English child psychologist who has been to
Iran a couple of times. I had spoken with her several times on
the phone but it was a delightful pleasure to finally meet her in person. The name of this lovely daring and
determined lawyer may be known to many of you especially recently as she has
been the hard working and tough lawyer of many of the women activists recently
arrested in Tehran. She is also heavily involved in child
abuse and human rights cases, and she is an active member of the Society for the
Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPRC). She is very involved with the society’s
legal section.
Nasrin Sotoudeh became a lawyer to
help children and those subject to human rights abuse as well as women. When she started her practice, the horror
that she faced was completely beyond her expectation. She found children as young as 11-12
under death sentence, many cases of child sexual abuse, violence against women
and children, human rights abuse and cases involving defenders of democratic
rights. She can never rest to fight for the
underprivileged and yet she must find the strength to do
more.
She comes from a normal Iranian
family and was in love with philosophy and although in her concours
(university entrance exam) she got the rank of 53rd, she did not have sufficient
marks to study philosophy, and so she went to study law and later finished her
Masters at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran.
She started her career at the
Ministry of Housing legal office and after two years she joined the legal
section of Bank Tejarat. During her
tenure at Bank Tejarat she was heavily involved with preparing the legal case
and the legal arguments for many of the cases that Iran presented at The
Hague during the Algeria court summons there. She believes that Iran had a
really bad deal by signing the Algerian decree, from the financial and legal
point of view. According to that
decree, Iran had to put about one billion
dollars in an account so that if any case was lost, damages would be paid. This made the cases go mostly in favor
of the Americans.
In 1995 she took the Bar (Kanoon
Vokala) exam and passed and got her lawyers credentials at the age of 39, and
she is one of most active members of the law society.
Nasrin’s hope is to see a better
situation for women and children because she strongly believes that if this is
achieved the rest of the improvements will follow automatically. She disagrees with those who look at it
solely from a political view and she thinks if the politics are sorted out, the
conditions for women and children will improve.
When she takes on a new
case she tells her clients that “I shall do my best but I do not know the final
verdict; we shall do our best to make your case legally viable, but the final
outcome all depends on the court”
She told me of many child abuse
cases that she has handled but I found interesting one recent one that she has
been involved with. It is often
thought that child abuse happens mainly in poor or uneducated families. In this particular case she said that the
father, a well educated man, had been abusing his son since he was three years
old. The mother left her husband’s
home and it was then that she found out what had been happening to the child, as
he had been threatened with a gun by the father that if he spoke both he and his
mother would be killed.
Despite the fact that this child has
been interviewed by professional physiologists and his testimony has been
confirmed by them, the court still found it hard to issue its verdict in favor
of the mother for the custody of the child. When I ask why, Nasrin told me that that
they think such cases are bad and must not be made public! She does not press for the penal case, as
to her, even if the case is won and the father is convicted, what good would
come out of it. She thinks that many of these men are ill
or victims of mistreatment in the past themselves, and in need of professional
care and medication. She tries very hard in her job to ensure
that abused children are not returned to their fathers, where they can expect to
be abused again. She also hopes
that the courts will make better use of child specialists and psychologists in
verifying abuse cases and save these innocent children, rather then cover up
such cases.
In her practice she endures a lot
of stress, as many of the cases that she handles, such as children, women and
human rights, are very emotionally moving cases. So when I commented on her ability to
stay so calm, she said “I need to stay
calm in order to manage my case properly and efficiently, by losing my temper I
lose management of my case”.
She has had many well known clients, such as Nahid Keshavarz, Parvin
Ardalan, Omid Memarian, Roya Tolouie and many well known child abuse and
criminal cases.
She believes that the courts want to
improve the well-being of women and children, yet they do not wish to disturb
the status quo. She is adamant like
me and all of you that no child should ever be hanged no matter what they have
done.
When we got to talk about women in
Iran it seemed that we both strongly
believe that women’s liberation is a double edged sword. We both believe that women should work
and earn their living as simply as they expect to be educated and they should
use their education to get a job, earn a living and make a social contribution.
She said that women should make
sure that when they get married, they clearly obtain the right to work, the
place to live and the right to divorce on their marriage certificate. Nasrin thinks that for modern women the
mehrieh (the dowry that is given to
the wife in case of divorce) should be symbolic; however for those in the provinces and
the lower sides of society, the mehrieh,
along with the children, is one of the reasons that keep many families
together.
She had told me before Norouz
(Iranian New Year) that she was expecting and she would like to take things a
little easier but this wish will not be easy. I had imagined her to be much taller and
bigger. This tiger lady is softly
spoken and quite slim, despite being in her 4th month of
pregnancy. She has an 8 year old
daughter already and has been married for many years. She told me that her husband Reza who is
in advertising is truly a modern man, meaning that he shares all of their joint
life together especially caring for their daughter and housework. He never complains about her work and
the strange hours she keeps. She
told me that not only does Reza help her a lot but he also believes in true
democracy like her and at home the vote of majority always rules. He is a great father and a wonderful
husband and a fantastic friend and stands by her and for her in her work and
struggles. She said that she used
to like grey but recently, her favorite color is pink. It may be because that
her daughter wears pink so often and she loves her so much. Nasrin loves to travel as she believes
that there is nothing like real experience, after all you have to get your hands
dirty in order to understand how plants grow.
I am sure you will all join me in
wishing Nasrin Sotoudeh health and strength in her work to bring justice and
fairness for all those to whom she so passionately devotes herself and her time
and hope that she will have a healthy baby at the end of the summer to bring
more joy to her and her family.
... Payvand News - 5/29/07 ...
... Payvand News - 5/29/07 ... --
