Ali Shariati, a sociologist during the Iranian Revolution, used to say, ‘Religion should wake people up, not put them to sleep.’ The revolution ended with the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty on February 11, 1979. All sections of society, including students, workers, leftists, businessmen, and women, participated in the revolution. But due to the narrow leadership of religious groups, it failed to transform society.

At this time, the religious groups led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khamenei wanted a government based on Islamic principles. They did not care much about the economic justice that small businessmen and workers wanted, the freedom that women wanted, and the good governance that youth and students wanted. They formed a paramilitary force after the revolution, which is called the ‘Revolutionary Guards’ in Iran.

On April 1, a referendum overthrew the secular monarchy and declared Iran an Islamic republic. Shirin Ebadi was the ‘Batch 24’ chief judge of the Tehran City Court at the time. However, after the revolution, all female judges in all courts across the country, including her, were demoted. The clerics had said that women could not be appointed as judges according to Islamic law. Despite being the first woman to be appointed as the head of any court in Iran and the youngest person at the time, her talent was ignored by the state.

Ebadi, who was in Spain after the regime’s repression increased in Iran before the 2009 presidential election, could not return to the country Ebadi recalls, ‘I and other female judges were demoted and asked to work as clerks. I was asked to work as clerks in the court where I was the head. We all protested. As a result, all of us former female judges were taken to the Department of Justice as experts. I could not bear it and quickly sent my resignation letter. It was accepted immediately,’ she said when receiving the Nobel Prize, ‘The Bar Association was closed for some time after the revolution. The court itself was responsible for its work, and my application for a lawyer was not accepted.’

Iran saw a lot of turmoil after the revolution. On October 24, 1979, a gathering of constitutional experts prepared a new constitution, the first and second articles of which state that sovereignty rests with ‘God’. The sixth article states that elections for the president and parliament will be held. Thus, the ‘hybrid’ government, which was made up of democratic and religious elements, was a unique experiment in world politics. The liberal and intellectual community within the country did not believe that such a constitution would bring good governance.

Liberals were in favor of cooperating with the international community. However, the majority of the people were not interested in this. Because the main reason for the decline of the Persian Empire, which had been leading in innovation, development and prosperity until the Industrial Revolution, was the distorted view of its resources by foreigners. At that time, when the Cold War was at its peak, they saw Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards as the right choice to prevent the spread of influence of the United States or the Soviet Union. Finally, the referendum on December 2 and 3, boycotted by the opposition, passed the constitution of the Islamic Republic with almost 99 percent of the vote.

In 1906, the path to modernity opened by the secular constitution was blocked. Khamenei became the Supreme Leader, and he appointed extremists to the 12-member Constitutional Council. A nominal president was elected to the rest of the world. In 1980, Khamenei launched a ‘Cultural Revolution’ to eliminate opponents.

This shows that the 1979 revolution could not do anything other than the tragic situation of overthrowing one dictator and giving birth to another. Universities were closed for almost 3 years. Because, the educated community here advocated a secular constitution. By the time they were reopened, many books had been banned. Many university scholars had been prosecuted. There were protests in some universities. However, the government suppressed them and killed the students. After the death of Ruhollah Khamenei in 1989, his follower Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been the Supreme Leader for the past 37 years. This shows that the 1979 revolution could not do anything other than the tragic situation of overthrowing one dictator and giving birth to another. 

Shirin Ebadi was born on January 22, 1947 in the beautiful mountain city of Hamadan, Iran. When she was one year old, the family moved from her ancestral village to Tehran. Her father, Mohammad Ali Ebadi, came from a wealthy family and was the head of the Tehran notary public office and a professor of commercial law. She described her family as very liberal and freedom-loving in her autobiography. She remembers a very loving relationship between her parents.

‘My mother dreamed of studying medicine. But all this was out of her control. At least she was able to marry a man who was less patriarchal than could have been imagined at the time. ‘My father was calm by nature, always controlled his anger and never raised his voice. If he got angry sometimes, he would walk with his hands tied behind his back or carefully take a cigarette out of a silver case and smoke. He would take his time to calm down and only raise his head when he was completely calm,’ she wrote.

As a child, she heard a lot about Shah Reza from her mother. Reza's son (the last Shah) was ruled by Mohammad Shah. She has a different experience of the two fathers' and sons' rule. 'My mother never wore the hijab. Because her family was not strict about allowing their daughters to cover their heads. She was a witness to the modernization journey that Reza Shah started in 1936 and the ban on the hijab. The task of centralizing a country full of villages and farmers overnight with railways and laws was not easy,' she writes. 'Reza knew that this would be impossible without the women of the country. So he banned the hijab, a symbol of the shackles of tradition, and began liberating women. Reza was the first Iranian ruler to reduce the influence of religious leaders and political agendas on women's bodies. He was not the last.'

She has no sympathy for Mohammad Shah. In 1941, Britain and the Soviet Union invaded Iran and forcibly removed Reza from office. Then, Prince Mohammad Shah was placed on the throne. Reza's policy of remaining neutral in the World War had created all these situations. He had refused Britain's request for permission to use the Persian Corridor to send weapons to the Soviet Union and had ordered the deportation of about 1,000 German citizens in Iran. 

Mohammad Shah, who ascended to the throne after deposing his own father, had dismissed Prime Minister Mossadegh and imprisoned him after 12 years. Britain was also behind the scenes. Because in 1951, Mossadegh had decided to nationalize the British-owned Anglo Persian Oil Company (APOC). Shocked by Mossadegh's decision, Britain sent its intelligence agency MI6 to conduct a secret operation here. The American Intelligence Agency (CIA) supported this. Mohammad Shah Pahlavi was used in this. An anti-government movement was launched in Tehran at a cost of more than one million US dollars. The protesters demanded that the Shah take power. Following this movement, Mossadegh's regime collapsed in August and an active monarchy began under the leadership of Mohammad Shah.

'Mossadegh has been overthrown in a coup. This news meant nothing to us children. We laughed at the disappointed eyes and sad faces of the adults, and ran out of the living room. The Shah's supporters, who had taken over the national radio network, declared the Iranian people's victory with Mossadegh's fall,' Ebadi writes about the 1953 incident in her autobiography 'Iran Awakens', chapter one (Tehran's Childhood), 'For both secular and religious Iranians, the working class and the rich, Mossadegh was more than a popular politician. For them, he was also a beloved nationalist hero. He had the potential to guide a great civilization with a history of more than 2,500 years. After the coup, the Shah ordered Mossadegh to be tried and later sentenced to death. However, the Shah, as if showing mercy, sentenced him to only three years in prison. After three years in Tehran's central prison, Mossadegh went to his village, Ahmedabad.' 

Mohammad ruled by giving the British and Americans whatever oil they wanted. In the process, he also continued the reformist plans his father had put forward. The presence of women in government offices had become more widespread by this time. Ebadi notes in her autobiography that until the 1960s, Iranian society was progressive in the eyes of the middle class. 'There were cinemas, universities, and openness for women for the middle class. However, the countryside was neglected, and political opponents were seething against the Shah's autocratic rule. Mossadegh, who lived in a village in Ahmedabad, would write and send replies to letters from anti-Shah and loyalists. His meticulous and clear handwritten replies were seen framed in the offices of Iran's leading opposition figures,' she writes of Iran on the brink of revolution. 

After graduating from Tehran University in 1968 with a law degree, she worked as an intern for a few months. The following year, she passed the bar exam and became a judge. She continued her university studies with the goal of earning a PhD. In 1971, she was tutored by the renowned professor Mahmoud Shehabi Khorasani. 

In 1975, she became the chief judge of Tehran. During this time, she married and had two daughters, Nigar and Nargis. She left her job as a judge after the 1979 revolution. By this time, conservative rule in Iran had become high. Most women were forced to walk on the streets of Tehran wearing the hijab. In 1992, she opened a private law firm to work on human rights cases. She often handled high-profile, sensitive political cases. She also handled the case of Parvaneh and Darius Forouhar, two political activists who were killed by security forces in 1998. She also fought for the rights of Zahra Bani Yaghoub, a doctor who died in police custody, and seven leaders of Iran's minority Baha'i community.

She came under the Iranian government's scrutiny after she defended student Ezzat Ebrahim Najid, who was killed during a protest at Tehran University in 1999. That same year, she was arrested on charges of spreading false information against the Islamic Republic. She was held in secret detention for 25 days and sentenced to 18 months in prison. She was also banned from practicing law for five years. 

In 2003, Ebadi oversaw the case of Zahra Kazemi. The Iranian-born Canadian freelance photojournalist was arrested by Iranian authorities in 2003 on charges of illegally photographing prisons and held in Tehran's Evin Prison. She was raped and tortured by Iranian authorities. She died in custody. In 2003, Ebadi became the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She used part of the proceeds to establish an NGO called the Center for Human Rights Defenders to support the families of political prisoners. The organization quickly became popular in Iran, and was recognized by the National Advisory Commission for Human Rights in France that same year. 

Similarly, in 2004, Forbes listed her as one of the world's 100 most influential women. In 2006, she played a key role in launching the "One Million Campaign," a campaign that collected one million signatures to pressure the Iranian government to repeal anti-women laws. In 2008, the office of the Human Rights Defenders in Iran was raided by police. All of its assets were confiscated. Her sister and husband were also briefly detained in an attempt to silence Ebadi. 

Ebadi traveled to Spain for a conference before Iran's presidential election in 2009. She decided not to return to the country, citing the growing repression of human rights activists, the imprisonment of her colleagues, and the government's repression of the general public. However, she has continued her campaigning while abroad. 

इरानमा २००९ मा राष्ट्रपतीय निर्वाचनमा भएको धाँधली, २०१७–१८ मा आर्थिक मन्दी, २०१९ मा पेट्रोलियम पदार्थको मूल्यवृद्धि, २०२२–२३ मा हिजाब प्रतिबन्ध अन्त्य र अहिले सत्ता छाड्न माग गर्दै प्रदर्शन गरिरहेका छन् । यी आन्दोलनमा सरकारले दमन गर्दा ठूलो संख्यामा मानिसको ज्यान गएको छ । त्यस्तै, धेरै मानिस पक्राउ परेका छन् भने धेरैजना घाइते छन् । प्रवासबाटै एबादीले यी आन्दोलनमा ऐक्यबद्धता जनाएकी छन् । उनले इरानमा भइरहेका मानवअधिकार उल्लंघनका घटनामा विश्व समुदायको ध्यान आकृष्ट गर्न महत्त्वपूर्ण भूमिका खेलिरहेकी छन् । 

त्यस्तै, मानवअधिकारसम्बन्धी प्रशिक्षण दिएर बाँकी विश्वमा पनि बाल अधिकार, मानवअधिकार र महिला अधिकारका क्षेत्रमा काम गर्ने रक्षकहरू जन्माइरहेकी छन् । उनले मानवअधिकारका विभिन्न पक्षबारे १३ वटा पुस्तक र ७० भन्दा बढी लेख लेखिसकेकी छन् । शासकहरूकै भ्रष्ट आचरण, तानाशाहीपनले इरानमा अहिले आन्दोलन चलिरहेको एबादीको टिप्पणी छ । ‘पहिलेको समृद्ध इरानलाई ४७ वर्षदेखि शासकहरूको अक्षमता र भ्रष्टाचारले समस्यामा पार्‍यो । नत्र, इस्लामिक गणतन्त्र बन्दा १ डलरको भाउ ७ टोमन थियो । अहिले १ लाख ३५ हजार टोमनभन्दा माथि पुगिसकेको छ,’ रेडियो फ्रि युरोपसँगको अन्तर्वार्तामा केही समयअघि उनले भनिन्, ‘यहाँका शासकहरूले आफू र आफ्नो परिवारलाई विशेषाधिकार दिएका छन् । आम जनतालाई उत्पीडनमा राखेका छन् । मलाई आशा छ, यस पटकको आन्दोलनले यो अवस्था अन्त्य गर्नेछ । सत्ता ढल्नेछ र जनताले जित्नेछन् । किनकि, अब सत्तासँग दमन गर्ने शक्ति र इच्छा सकिएको छ । पहिलेका प्रदर्शनहरू जसरी नै मान्छे मार्नु भनेको उनीहरूको रिसको आगोमा पेट्रोल खन्याउनुजस्तै हो ।’ 

इरानको उल्टो बाटो 

संयुक्त राष्ट्रसंघमा ‘महिलाविरुद्ध सबै प्रकारको भेदभाव उन्मूलनसम्बन्धी महासन्धि (सीडब्लूईडीएडब्लू)’ मा हस्ताक्षर नगर्ने सदस्य राष्ट्रमध्ये इरान एक हो । निश्चित अपराधहरूमा अदालतमा महिला र बालिकाहरू साक्षी बस्नुको कुनै कानुनी अर्थ छैन । महिलालाई हिजाब लगाउन अनिवार्य छ । यस नियम पालना नगर्नेहरूले जरिवाना, लामो जेल सजाय, रोजगारी र शैक्षिक अवसरमा प्रतिबन्धहरू झेल्नुपर्ने हुन सक्छ । 

विश्व आर्थिक मञ्चको २०२४ को ‘ग्लोबल जेन्डर ग्याप’ प्रतिवेदनमा इरान १४६ देशमध्ये १४३ औं स्थानमा छ । श्रमशक्तिमा महिलाको सहभागिता १४ प्रतिशतभन्दा कम छ भने पुरुषको ६७ प्रतिशतभन्दा बढी छ ।

श्रमसंहिताले महिलालाई ‘खतरनाक, कठिन वा हानिकारक काममा रोजगारीबाट रोक्छ । पतिले ‘परिवारको हित वा आफ्नो वा पत्नीको मर्यादा’ विपरीत महसुस गरेमा रोजगारीमा रोक लगाउन सक्छन् । महिलालाई सर्वोच्च नेता बन्न निषेध छ र न्यायाधीश बन्न सक्दैनन् । संसद्का २९० सिटमध्ये केवल १४ जना महिला सदस्य छन् । गार्डियन काउन्सिलले कहिल्यै महिलालाई राष्ट्रपतीय चुनाव वा ‘विज्ञहरूको भेलामा’ उम्मेदवार बनाउन अनुमति दिएको छैन ।