Women who fight for the rule of law in Islamist regimes but receive little attention in the West
Ebru Timtik the West let her die after months of detention and 238 days of hunger strike, which began to demand a fair trial. Timtik was a lawyer committed to defending human rights and political prisoners, particularly some victims of the Gezi Park anti-government protests in 2013. For Turkish President Erdogan, however, Timtik was just an enemy, part of an accused association of lawyers to be in league with a Marxist-Leninist organization responsible for some attacks in Ankara. We can only hope that at least she did not die in vain …
But in the same condition as Ebru Timtik there are other courageous lawyers, imprisoned in the cells of fundamentalist regimes who, well before Erdogan's Islamist Turkey, made political Islam their reason for living. We are talking above all about Nasrin Sotoudeh, an Iranian lawyer also involved in the defense of human rights and political prisoners, who on 11 August last began a hunger strike to obtain justice for the Iranian prisoners, crowded into cramped cells despite the emergency. coronavirus that has been running unchecked for months across the country.
For those unfamiliar with her, Nasrin Sotoudeh was first jailed in 2010 and only released three years later, in 2013. The charge against her was a threat to national security. In 2011, while in prison in Evin, Nasrin was awarded the PEN America Prize and, the following year, the Sakharov Prize from the European Parliament. Arrested again in 2018, she was accused of propaganda against the state and sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes.
Faced with Nasrin's protest to demand rights for Iranian detainees, Tehran reacted with anger, arresting Sotodudeh's daughter, Mehraveh Khandan, on a pretext, who was taken from her home a few days ago and also transferred to Evin prison (where they are being held most political prisoners). The arrest of her daughter provoked Sotoudeh's anger, but strengthened her political battle against the abuses of the Islamic Republic.
The ball is now in the hands of the West. This time, contrary to what happened with Ebru Timtik in Turkey, it is necessary that Nasrin Sotoudeh's life is not sacrificed on the altar of a realpolitik which, rather than a realist strategy, now seems a real silence.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/le-donne-che-combattono-per-lo-stato-di-diritto-nei-regimi-islamisti-ma-ricevono-poca-attenzione-in-occidente/ on Mon, 31 Aug 2020 04:08:00 +0000.