Mehrangiz Kar
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Mehrangiz Kar
1944 -
Iranian lawyer, writer, and women's rights activist.
Mehrangiz Kar was born in Ahvaz, Iran, in 1944. She studied law at the School of Law and Political Science, Tehran University. After graduation, she worked for the Social Security Department and also wrote for the press, publishing more than 100 articles on current social and political issues in newspapers and magazines. She obtained her attorney's license in 1978, shortly before the Iranian Revolution, but she did not start her own practice until the early 1990s. In 1992 Kar began collaboration with Zanan, a monthly journal (launched the same year) with an Islamic feminist agenda. Her advocacy of political, legal, and constitutional reform, including the promotion of civil society and democracy and the dismantling of legal barriers to women's rights, made her a target of the antireformist backlash that followed the massive reformist victory in the February 2000 parliamentary elections. In April 2000, Kar was arrested for participating in the Berlin conference on the future of reforms in Iran, charged with acting against national security and disseminating propaganda against the Islamic regime. Released after six weeks, then tried in closed hearings in January 2001, she was convicted and sentenced to four years' imprisonment. Granted bail to leave the country for medical treatment, she moved to the United States. The appeal court later reduced her sentence to a fine, but meanwhile her husband, Siyamak Pourzand, was jailed. She has published several books in Persian and has received many international awards, including the 2002 LudovicTrarieux Award.
Bibliography
Kar, Mehrangiz. "Women's Strategies in Iran from 1979 Revolution to 1999." In Globalization, Gender, and Religion: The Politics of Women's Rights in Catholic and Muslim Contexts, edited by Jane H. Bayes and Nayereh Tohidi. New York and Hampshire, U.K.: Palgrave, 2001.
— ZIBA MIR-HOSSEINI
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Mehrangiz Kar
Mehrangiz Kar (b. 1944; Ahvaz, Iran) (Persian: مهرانگیز کار) is a prominent Iranian lawyer, human right activist and author of the book Crossing the Red Line, as well as many articles.
Mehrangiz Kar is a celebrated activist of women's rights in Iran.
Mehangiz Kar was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and in the 2005/06 academic year was based at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.[1]
She has also been recognized as a Scholar at Risk through an international network of universities and colleges working to promote academic freedom and to defend the human rights of scholars worldwide. She currently works in Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women in Brown University.
In 2002, the U.S. First Lady, Laura Bush, gave her the National Endowment for Democracy's Democracy award.[2]
She is the widow of Siamak Pourzand, a fellow Iranian dissident and former prisoner of conscience[3] who committed suicide on 29 April 2011, after a long period of torture and imprisonment.[4]
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Awards and honours
- 2004 Recipient of the annual Human Rights First (formerly Lawyers Committee For Human Rights) Human Rights Award
- 2002 Ludovic-Trarieux International Human Rights Prize (France) for a lawyer working to promote women’s human rights, awarded jointly by the Human Rights Institute of the Bar of Bordeaux and the European Lawyers Union.
- 2002 Democracy Award of the National Endowment for Democracy (U.S.), for advancing human rights and democracy.
- 2002 Hellman/Hammett Grant from Human Rights Watch (International) for a writer who is a target of political persecution.
- 2001 Vasyl Stus Freedom-to-Write Award of PEN New England (Massachusetts, U.S.), for a writer who has struggled in the face of oppression and brutality to make her voice heard.
- 2000 PEN/NOVIB Award of PEN Clube (Netherlands), for writers who have lost their liberty for political and ideological reasons.
- 2000 Donna Dell’anno Award of the Conseil De Lavallee Consiglio Regionale Della Valle D’aosta (Italy), for persevering in the fight for freedom and the defense of women’s rights.
- 2000 Latifeh Yarshater Award of the Society for Iranian Studies (U.S.), for the best book on Iranian women.
- 1975 Forough Faroukhzad Award (Iran), for best article.
See also
References
- ^ Past Carr Center Fellows, Retrieved on 11 March 2011.
- ^ Publications
- ^ "Siamak Pourzand: a case study of flagrant human rights violations". Amnesty International. May 2004. http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=914A399538BBCECA80256E90005266C5&lang=e. Retrieved 6 May 2011.
- ^ Eli Lake (1 May 2011). "Longtime Iranian dissident kills self ‘to prove his disgust for regime’". Washington Times. http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=914A399538BBCECA80256E90005266C5&lang=e. Retrieved 6 May 2011.
External links
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Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa. Copyright © 2004 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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