Watchdog

Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi says she hopes Armenian officials will listen to international human rights activists pleas and release a dozen jailed opposition activists, RFE/RL's Armenian Service reports.

Ebadi spoke to RFE/RL on April 7 following a visit to a Yerevan prison and its hospital. She said she is glad the Armenian authorities kept their promise -- given to her personally by President Serzh Sarkisian on April 6 -- to allow her to visit the prison.

However, Ebadi said she could not meet the prisoners in their cells or prison hospital inmates within the medical premises of the hospital, and instead saw them in special visitor rooms. She said such meetings kept her from seeing what conditions the prisoners live in.

Ebadi was in Yerevan for a two-day conference by the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) that was attended by some 300 rights activists from around the world.

She also was among a group of international activists who attended the rally of the main opposition Armenian National Congress on April 6. The rally, which was organized by the alliance led by opposition leader and former President Levon Ter-Petrossian, focused on the issue of people the opposition considers political prisoners.

Opposition parties say at least a dozen of their leaders and activists are political prisoners. Officials deny holding any political prisoners and say those opposition activists who are in prison were convicted because they broke the law.

But Ebadi, like other delegates from the FIDH conference, described the imprisoned oppositionists as political prisoners when they addressed the opposition rally.

Ebadi dismissed suggestions by journalists that hosting the FIDH conference in Yerevan would send the wrong message about Armenia's human rights record.

"When the FIDH decided to hold its meeting in [Armenia], your country enjoyed a better situation than the other countries in the region," she said. "When we decided to hold our meeting here, we didn't say or believe there are no human rights violations here."

A lawyer and former judge, Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her efforts to promote democracy and human rights in Iran.

"There are numerous journalists who are in prison in Iran right now," Ebadi added. "We cannot hold meetings like this in my country."

A coalition of media freedom organizations has delivered a petition to Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York demanding the immediate release of dozens of journalists, writers, and bloggers currently imprisoned in the country.

The New York-based Committee To Protect Journalists, one of the sponsors of the campaign, says in a press release that more than 3,500 people signed the petition, including many well-known writers, journalists, and rights advocates.

The petition campaign is titled “Our Society Will Be A Free Society,” in reference to a quote by Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ruhollah Mousavi Khomeini, who said in 1978 on the eve of the revolution: “Our future society will be a free society, and all the elements of oppression, cruelty, and force will be destroyed.”

“We hope those in jail will be heartened by this level of international attention,” said Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). “By collecting these names from all corners of the world, we want to convey to our imprisoned colleagues the depth of our concern and to Iranian authorities the depth of our outrage.”

According to CPJ, at least 34 journalists were jailed in Iran as of April 1, and another 18 were free on short-term furloughs but were expected to report back to prison soon.

Meanwhile today, Iranian journalist and human rights activist Abolfazl Abedini has reportedly been given an 11-year prison sentence.