Nobel laureate Ebadi: Iranian protests are ‘beginning of the end for the regime’
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Salma Hossein
- . February 4, 2023
- . Update: February 4, 2023 4:07 pm
Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has said that the protests in the Islamic Republic of Iran over the death in custody of a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman are the “beginning of the end for the Iranian regime.”
On Friday, she said that the start of an irreversible “revolutionary process” following the death of Mahsa Amini would eventually lead to the collapse of the Iranian regime in Tehran. She referred to the protest as a “revolutionary process.”
Ebadi, an Iranian political activist, lawyer and former judge, said, “This revolutionary process is like a train that will not stop until it reaches its final destination.”
Ebadi, who is also a human rights activist and founder of the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran, spoke to Reuters about the Iranian protests in a phone interview from London. The Iranian activist won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her work defending human rights. She graduated from the University of Tehran.
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She further said, “The protests have taken a different shape, but they have not ended.” She has been in exile in London since 2009.
Huge demonstrations erupted in the Islamic Republic after the death of Amini. She was arrested in September 2022 for wearing “inappropriate attire” and a “loose hijab.” Later on, she died at a hospital in Tehran because of internal injuries. Human rights activists said that the morality police tortured Amini because she wore a loose hijab. Amini’s family said that the morality police took Amini to the detention centre to beat her.
However, the Iranian authorities blamed Amini’s death on pre existing medical problems. They also accused the United States and other foes of fomenting the unrest in the Islamic Republic. They also handed down dozens of death sentences to people involved in protests across the country.
