OSLO, 11 December 2003 — Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo yesterday, accused the United States of using the Sept. 11 attacks to justify violating international law and human rights. “In the past two years, some states have violated the universal principles and laws of human rights by using the events of Sept. 11 and the war on international terrorism as a pretext,” Ebadi said in her acceptance speech, without mentioning the United States by name.
“International human rights laws are breached not only by their opponents...but... these principles are also violated in Western democracies,” she added. Ebadi, 56, received the prize from chairman of the Nobel committee Ole Mjoes at a formal ceremony in Oslo’s City Hall.
“All people are entitled to fundamental rights, and at a time when Islam is being demonized in many quarters of the Western world, it was the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s wish to underline how important and how valuable it is to foster dialogue between peoples and between civilizations,” Mjoes said in his introduction speech.
In her speech, Ebadi also commented on prisoners detained at the US base in Cuba, saying they were “without the benefit of the rights stipulated under the international Geneva conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”
Ebadi also pointed to selective application of UN decisions. “Why is it that some decisions and resolutions of the UN Security Council are binding, while some other resolutions of the council have no binding force?” she asked.
“Why is it that in the past 35 years, dozens of UN resolutions concerning the occupation of the Palestinian territories by the state of Israel have not been implemented properly,” she said.
