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On May 16th 2010, the Revolutionary Court sentenced Shadi Sadr to six years in prison and 74 lashes and Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh to two and a half years behind bars and thirty lashes. The official charges to both activists were “acts against national security through conspiracy and collusion intended to disrupt public security, disturbing public order and defiance against government officers”.

Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh and Shadi Sadr are well-known Iranian women's rights activists with impressive track records of activism. Both were leaders of the Stop Stoning Forever campaign to abolish the practice of stoning as death penalty in Iran and both have worked with Hivos. Both women are not in Iran at the moment.

March 2007
protest

In June 2006, a massive protest demanding equal rights for women ended brutally by police violence. When five of the organizers of this protest had to appear in court in March 2007, their fellow women’s rights activists protested peacefully in front of the court building. During this protest 33 women’s rights activists were arrested and interrogated. They were released during the following days, except two activists Shadi Sadr and Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, who were kept in detention and solitary confinement for two more weeks. In addition the organisation of which they were the directors and which were supported by Hivos, Raahi and NGOTC, were closed. The Iranian authorities and conservative media portrayed them and other western oriented civil society activists as marionets of the alleged western political agenda of regime change. In the following weeks and months, more offices of NGOs were closed, whereas many others stopped their activities due to the increasing repression of civil society in Iran.

Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh


Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh is a prominent women’s rights defender since the 1990s. She has also been active as journalist, editor-in chief, publisher and filmmaker. Abbasgholizadeh was the founder and director of the NGO Training Centre (NGOTC), which was supported by Hivos from 2005 until it was closed by the Iranian authorities in 2007. NGOTC mobilized and trained women’s groups throughout Iran. Abbasgholizadeh was also an active member of the Stop Stoning Forever Campaign and the Iranian Women’s Charter movement. She was first arrested and detained for fourty days of interrogations in November 2004, during the 2004 crackdown on bloggers, without any charges filed against her. She reported to have been subjected to torture. Her office, closed during her detention, reopened afterwards. In March 2007, she was arrested along with 32 other women activists during a peaceful demonstration. She was released after 16 days on a very high bail of 250 million toman (US$ 260,000). Her office was closed down for good this time, but she remained active. In December 2009, Abbasgholizadeh was arrested on her way to attend the funeral of Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, who had criticized the Iranian government’s crackdown on demonstrators in the aftermath of the June 2009 presidential elections. Abbasgholizadeh was conditionally released after 24 hours based on the promise that she would remove her films critical of the regime from the website of her collective.

Shadi Sadr

Shadi Sadr is a lawyer, journalist and human rights activist and has been fighting for women’s rights in Iran for years. As a lawyer she defended women who were sentenced to death by stoning, human rights activists and lawyers who were prosecuted by the Iranian government for their beliefs and points of view. She is also founder and director of Raahi. This organization provided legal advice to women about the possibilities of the Iranian legal system concerning amongst others divorce, child custody and domestic violence. Hivos supported Raahi from 2004 until the organization was closed down by the Iranian authorities in 2007. Shadi Sadr has been arrested and detained for questioning without clear charges several times. In March 2007, she was arrested along with 32 other women activists during a peaceful demonstration. She was released after 16 days. She was also arrested during the post-elections protests in Mid-2009. Shadi Sadr has received several awards. In 2009 she received the Polish Lech Walesa award, together with Ladan Boroumand and Roya Boroumand, and the Dutch Human Rights Tulip. In 2010 she received the International Women of Courage Award 2010 from the US government, which she dedicated to fellow activist Shiva Nazar Ahari, founder of the student Committee of Human Rights Reporters. Movies that Matter Festival awarded her it’s the Golden Butterfly award (Amnesty International's A Matter of ACT Award).

More info

Hivos blacklisted in Iran