Shirin Ebadi summoned to court

The Nobel Prize winning Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi has been summoned to appear before a revolutionary court in Tehran or face arrest. This summon doesn’t suggest why she has been summoned. This tells how arrogant these courts can be. Ebadi, 57, the first Muslim woman and first Iranian to win the Nobel Peace Prize, said she still had not decided when she would attend the court but she may attend the court at the last moment just to avoid unnecessary trouble.

When she got the Nobel Prize for Peace she said in a TV interview that she didn’t believe in confrontations as they harm the actual cause. She can easily go to some other country, live in exile and work for reforms, but she wants to improve the society from within, very gradually.

The revolutionary court was setup just after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and it primarily deals with national security offences. It has jailed many political dissidents in the past.

I think the international community should closely and carefully monitor the situation and shouldn’t let anything unpleasant happen to Ms. Ebadi. The courts in such countries are very unpredictable.