On Saturday, as the public mourned the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, another legendary defender of women’s rights, Nasrin Sotoudeh, suffered heart failure in the Tehran prison of Evin. She was rushed to Taleghani Hospital where her husband, Reza Khandan, saw her in grave condition, rolled into the emergency room by security guards. Last year, the Islamic Revolutionary Court sentenced her to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes for defending women who opposed mandatory hijab laws.
Sotoudeh was born in Tehran in 1963 in a religious, middle-class family. After studying law at Shahid Beheshti University, she worked at the Legal Office of Iranian Housing Ministry and then at the legal section of the state-owned bank Tejarat. In her early 30s, she rose to be one of the most prominent members of Iran’s Bar Association and became regarded by authorities as a source of opposition to the Islamic Revolution.
Her early legal work focused on protecting children from abusive fathers. Her stunning court appearances brought her a countrywide recognition and requests of legal defense from journalists and political activists crunched by the regime. Her clients included Iranian author Kourosh Zaim, politicians Isa Saharkhiz and Heshmatollah Tabarzadi, and women’s rights activists Parvin Ardalan and Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani. She served as an attorney for the Defenders of Human Rights Center, which was co-founded in 2001 by Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim woman awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Sotoudeh was first arrested in September 2010 on charges of spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security. Soon after the arrest, she started a hunger strike that lasted four weeks. In October 2012, still in prison, she began another hunger strike that lasted 49 days. On one of these days, the European Parliament awarded her the Andrei Sakharov Human Rights Prize. She was released from prison in September 2013, a few days before Iranian President Hassan Rouhani spoke at the United Nations.
In June 2018, Sotoudeh was arrested again. This time, she was charged with spying for a foreign government and insulting Iranian leader Ali Khamenei. Later, the charges of corruption and debauchery related to her work on women’s rights were added. The medieval sentence to the internationally renowned lawyer and mother of three, announced by the Revolutionary Court in March 2019, was met with worldwide protests by politicians and human rights organizations.
In 2020, poor hygiene in overcrowded Iranian prisons facilitated the rapid spread of COVID-19 among inmates. Iran has furloughed tens of thousands of petty criminals, but none of the political prisoners has been released. Prison authorities chose not to isolate those who tested positive without displaying symptoms. In protest, on Aug. 11, Sotoudeh began a hunger strike joined by other political prisoners.
The following week, five officers of the Intelligence Ministry raided her home in Tehran and arrested her 20-year-old daughter Mehraveh. Sotoudeh’s husband was told that the Evin Revolutionary Court charged their daughter with an assault on a female prison guard that allegedly occurred a year prior. Mehraveh was subsequently released on a bail equivalent to $24,000, which was posted by a fellow lawyer. The family interpreted this as a blunt attempt to force Nasrin Sotoudeh to end her hunger strike.
In addition, the Tehran Prosecutor’s Office, without producing a court order or providing an advanced notice, has ordered the freezing of Sotoudeh’s account at Tehran’s Pasargad Bank in an apparent effort to put economic pressure on the family. None of this has had any effect on Sotoudeh’s determination to continue her protest. She was on the 40th day of her hunger strike when she was hospitalized for a heart condition.
As her health is failing, one thing is clear: The 250,000 men in the Revolutionary Guard have lost the battle against a tiny, 57-year-old woman. The other loser is the U.N., which last year, the day after Sotoudeh was sentenced to 38 years and 148 lashes, appointed the Islamic Republic of Iran to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.
Eugene Chudnovsky is a distinguished professor at the City University of New York and co-chairman of the Committee of Concerned Scientists.
