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Tehran, March 2018 – Attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh reflects on a career that has led her to tackle the most sensitive causes in Iran, including saving minors from the death penalty, defending outlawed religious minorities and defending the Women rights.
“Although this movement did not achieve the desired results, it is an experience and an asset for our future steps. Because of this I should say to myself ‘Yes! You should have the right to be happy! ‘”, Smile.
Three months later, in June 2018, Sotoudeh was jailed to serve a five-year sentence on espionage charges, following a secret trial that she was unable to even attend.
The following year, he received a new 12-year sentence for “fomenting corruption and debauchery.”
The 2012 European Parliament Sakharov Prize winner and 2020 Right Livelihood Prize winner remains behind bars in Tehran’s Evin Prison, and her case is generating growing international concern.
Deprived of tools to communicate, Sotoudeh, 57, risked her life on a month-and-a-half hunger strike from August to September, calling for the release of political prisoners during the Covid-19 pandemic.
But the release of a documentary has given Sotoudeh a new voice to express his determination to campaign for justice in Iran.
The film, “Nasrin,” shows Sotoudeh doing her day job in Iran before her latest arrest, defending cases including those of women arrested for removing the mandatory headscarf.
“If we are successful in these efforts to earn our freedom through our choice of clothing, then it will be permanent freedom,” he tells the camera on film.
“We need to talk. We need to demand. We need to insist. We need to stand firm. “
– ‘Risk a lot’ –
The credits for the film, made by documentary filmmaker Jeff Kaufman and narrated by “The Crown” actress Olivia Colman, say that the filming on the ground in Iran was done by “anonymous” people with their names hidden for security reasons.
“We found a couple of people that we could work with and that we could trust. They were just amazing. They risked a lot, ”Kaufman told AFP. “They felt that getting the story out was important.”
The film, which premiered at the GlobeDocs Film Festival this month, shows Sotoudeh deep in the intensity of her daily routine, negotiating the crowded Tehran traffic at the wheel of her car as she travels from her office to the courthouse.
She gently guides a tearful young woman through the prospect that the judiciary is likely to impose a prison sentence for her bold protest by symbolically removing her headscarf. But the smile and kindness never fail.
“You must have one of these cakes,” he tells her.
Another client is celebrated Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who featured Sotoudeh in a cameo appearance in his award-winning film “Taxi Tehran,” made inside a car due to a movie-making ban, while seeking to have the travel ban lifted.
The film also shows the toll in Sotoudeh’s family life, as her young daughter and son can only communicate through phone calls and occasional visits to the prison behind a thick pane of glass.
“This call is made by an inmate at Evin Prison,” says an automated voice that constantly interrupts a phone call with the family.
– ‘Enemy of progress’ –
Sotoudeh was previously imprisoned from 2010 to 2013, during which time she organized several hunger strikes.
“One of the problems is that you can never take what they (authorities) say seriously,” says her husband Reza Khandan in the film, “it is never clear if they are telling the truth.”
Taghi Rahmani, the husband of rights activist Narges Mohammadi, who spent half a decade in jail, adds that “Evin is where freedom bleeds and human rights are violated and violated.”
In a rare glimmer of hope, Mohammadi was unexpectedly released last week.
Kaufman said Sotoudeh never got a chance to see the movie.
“But Reza and the children have done it, and they have been very supportive,” he said, adding that he was optimistic that the film would raise awareness of his case.
“The regime has a way of putting pressure on families to keep them silent,” he said. “Nasrin and Reza believe that silence is the enemy of progress.”
sjw / js / jj
© Agence France-Presse
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