Shadi Sadr Wins Prize for Defense of Human Rights

Shadi Sadr has received the Lech Walesa Prize in a ceremony held in the Lech Walesa Foundation at Gdansk in Poland on Tuesday 30 September. Lech Walesa Foundation announced that Shadi received the prize for “her promotion of human rights, freedom of expression and democracy in Iran”.

The prize was created by the ex-leader of the Polish Solidarity trade union and Nobel Peace Prize laureate to mark those who devote their lives to freedom.

Shadi Sadr — who is one of the participants of our conference “Communicating with the Persian-speaking World” last June — is a prominent lawyer, women’s rights activist and journalist, and a leading figure in the campaign against stoning as a punishment in Islamic countries. She is an outspoken critic of capital punishment who has been arrested twice for her brave participation in defense of women’s rights.

During the recent post election demonstrations in Iran she was arrested in July and held for 11 days in Tehran’s Evin Prison. This was during the wave of arrests following the disputed presidential election of June 12. She was released on 28 July on a bail of approximately 50,000 dollars. Shadi was also arrested for two weeks in 2007 for participating in International Women’s Day demonstrations in Tehran in March 2007 where female Bassij militia women.

The Lech Walesa Prize was created in 2008 to honor those “who stand for understanding, freedom and for the promotion of the fundamental values of Solidarity Movement,” the trade union which Walesa headed in the 1980s to combat Poland’s then communist government.

“The Lech Walesa Prize shows solidarity with those who struggle for [a] better tomorrow for their countrymen and the world society,” says the Lech Walesa foundation on its web site.