"We will not allow an American soldier to set foot [in Iran]. We will defend our country till the last drop of blood.''
- Shirin Ebadi, Iranian winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize.
And for a bonus quote from Ebadi:
"The intervention of the American army will not improve the situation - the experience of Iraq has demonstrated that."
Ebadi has been speaking out against U.S. intervention in Iran since
2003, when talk of the U.S. bombing nuclear facilities in Iran was first heard, and again
the next year. Her most dramatic moment occured in December, 2003, while delivering her Nobel Prize acceptance address. I wrote about it
like this:
Unlike the "real" (original) Nobel Prizes (Physics, Chemistry, etc.), the Nobel Peace Prize is a political award, meant to sent a message to someone, typically someone not in favor in "the West." This year's prize, to Iranian reformist lawyer Shirin Ebadi, was meant to send a message to the religious rulers of Iran in support of human rights in that country. However the winner herself apparently has a different idea about the message she wants to send:Iran's Shirin Ebadi became the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize Wednesday and sent a bold anti-war message to the West, accusing it of hiding behind the Sept. 11 attacks to violate human rights.
"In the past two years, some states have violated the universal principles and laws of human rights by using the events of Sept. 11 and the war on international terrorism as a pretext," she said in a prepared acceptance speech.
"Regulations restricting human rights and basic freedoms ... have been justified and given legitimacy under the cloak of the war on terrorism."
Ebadi said Guantanamo prisoners had been "without the benefit of the rights stipulated under the international Geneva conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the (U.N.) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."
