Iranian Human Rights Defender Wins 2009 Martin Ennals Award

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Madrid and New York –Emad Baghi has been selected to receive the 2009 Martin Ennals Laureate Award. A leading Iranian human rights defender based in Tehran, Baghi founded the Society for the Defense of Prisoners' Rights and has been a vigorous and outspoken opponent of the death penalty in Iran.

Baghi’s impressive body of work includes a scholarly examination of Islamic law (shari`a), in which he demonstrates the absence of any doctrinal requirement for capital punishment. In addition, his inventory of death row prisoners in Iran, including juvenile offenders, has been an important resource for UN human rights bodies and human rights groups outside the country. Baghi has spent four years in prison over the past decade for campaigning against the death penalty and for other human rights activities. Though no longer jailed, he still faces charges relating to his work for the defence of prisoners’ rights. Baghi also suffers from serious heart and kidney ailments, problems that recently led prison physicians to declare his medical condition critical.

According to Hans Thoolen, Chairman of the Jury of the MEA, Baghi is “an exceptionally brave man defending human rights despite imprisonment and poor health.”

In 2006, the Martin Ennals Award went to Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji. Since then, the situation for human rights defenders has not improved. Activists promoting worker or minority rights, criminal justice reform, and many other fundamental human rights are harassed, subjected to travel bans, monitored, interrogated, prosecuted, and imprisoned.  Approximately 50 members of the One Million Signatures Campaign for gender equity have been detained for their peaceful activism. In December 2008, Iranian authorities closed Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi's Center for the Defense of Human Rights and detained one of the Center's employees. 

The Ceremony of the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders will take place in Geneva in November 2009. The prize is one of the leading awards of the human rights movement and is the product of a unique collaboration among ten of the world’s leading human rights organizations to give protection to human rights defenders worldwide.  The Jury is composed of the following NGOs: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, International Federation for Human Rights, World Organisation Against Torture, Front Line, International Commission of Jurists, German Diakonie, International Service for Human Rights and HURIDOCS.

Previous laureates include: Mutabar Tadjibaeva, Uzbekistan; Pierre Claver Mbonimpa, Burundi and Rajan Hoole-Kopalasingham Sritharan, Sri Lanka; Akbar Ganji, Iran and Arnold Tsunga, Zimbabwe; Aktham Naisse, Syria; Lida Yusupova, Russia; Alirio Uribe Muñoz, Colombia; Jacqueline Moudeina, Chad; Peace Brigades International; Immaculée Birhaheka, DR Congo; Natasha Kandic, Yugoslavia; Eyad El Sarraj, Palestine; Samuel Ruiz, Mexico; Clement Nwankwo, Nigeria; Asma Jahangir, Pakistan; Harry Wu, China.

Patrons of the Martin Ennals Award include Asma Jahangir, Barbara Hendricks, José Ramos-Horta, Adama Dieng, Leandro Despouy, Louise Arbour, Robert Fulghum, Theo van Boven and Werner Lottje.

For more information about this award and November’s program, visit www.martinennalsaward.org.

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