” What Women in Iran have to put up with is so much worse. If they won’t be silenced, then I won’t be silenced.”
Nazanin Afshin-Jam
This week an article about Nazanin Afshin-Jam and the Stop Child Executions Campaign was featured on the Daily Telegraph in UK . Here are some selected parts:
Even now, she says, smiling ruefully, her sister chides her not to take life so seriously. ‘Every once in a while I end up in a club for a friend’s stagette [hen night] or something, and I sit back and watch all these people and sometimes I wish I could have that fun. They are not thinking about everything; they are just living. But then I remember all the awful things in this world and how much I have got to do.’
“If I’d been an architect, I could have used my blessings to create an orphanage. My beauty meant I was able to bring attention to a cause. It’s calculated so that people get the message about human rights. You’ve got to be within the system to beat the system.”
Afshin-Jam’s most notable achievement to date is to have been instrumental in saving the life of her namesake, Nazanin Fatehi, an Iranian woman nine years her junior. In 2005, aged 17, Fatehi was walking in a park in Teheran when three men tried to rape her. Fighting back, she stabbed one of the men in the chest and killed him. She was sentenced to death for murder.
Human-rights activists adopted her cause for two reasons: one, because Fatehi had acted in self-defence; two, because Iran is a signatory to a UN charter that forbids passing the death penalty on anyone under the age of 18, an agreement it has often violated. The campaign made little headway, however, until Afshin-Jam became involved, after a French activist, who had Googled the name Nazanin, came across the beauty queen’s website.
He emailed asking for her help and, after some initial inquiries, she headed a ‘Help Nazanin’ campaign, posting a petition on her website. It quickly received more than 350,000 signatures. Afshin-Jam also worked with Amnesty International to secure a good lawyer for Fatehi in Iran and travelled extensively to lobby for diplomatic intervention.
Four months after Afshin-Jam received the original email, Fatehi was given a stay of execution. After a retrial in January this year she was exonerated of all murder charges and released. ‘I was so totally immersed in the campaign – every cell in my body, my brain, my heart. Maybe it was too much,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t rest. I’d wake up and immediately pick up my computer and start reading my emails.
‘ My family would say, “Have you eaten breakfast?” and I’d think, “Oh, yeah, I should get up and take a shower. It’s three o’clock.” I just lost myself.’ The women spoke minutes after Fatehi’s release and now talk frequently on the phone. ‘We laugh and talk about things. She’s sweet, quite quiet with a gentle voice. We’re trying to get her to Canada, either permanently or for a visit.’
In the wake of this success Afshin-Jam went on to found the Stop Child Executions campaign, working to save the other 80 minors on death row in Iran. She has, she says, been approached by several Canadian political parties to be a candidate but prefers to stay independent and campaign through her music.
Having jammed for several years with her brother-in-law, a professional musician, the pair wrote a few songs that made the basis of the album, whose title track, Someday, is a protest song attacking the ayatollahs. Her latest single, On Christmas Day, will be available as a download and all profits will go to Stop Child Executions.
Despite her passion for all things Iranian, her outspokenness makes it impossible to return. She has received death threats from fundamentalists. ‘It’s a bit scary at times,’ she says levelly. ‘Especially when someone says, “I’m going to slash a knife across your face and you’ll see where your career’s going to go.” ‘When I’m doing speeches I always look at the audience to see if there’s anyone suspicious. But what women in Iran have to put up with is so much worse. If they won’t be silenced, then I won’t be silenced.’ The single ‘On Christmas Day’ (Bodog Music), by Nazanin, is available on stopchildexecutions.com
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