Transcriber: 한균 김 Reviewer: Diba Szamosi
Good Morning.
I am a great fan of TEDx series of talks and especially being here in Vancouver.
It is a great privilege.
I'd like to thank the organizers for giving me this platform to speak to you
about how we can get more involved in human rights,
how we can be a voice for the voiceless and
also for allowing me to be able to share with you one of my dreams.
But before I do, I'd like to share with you
some other concerns I have in my homeland country,
in the country of my birth -- the human rights abuses that take place there.
If you lived there, half of you, if not I would say most of you
would be dead, you'd be killed by execution
or at the very least you would be imprisoned and tortured.
Now I don't want you to lift up your hand,
but the questions I'm gonna go through
I want you to think about it in your head
and consider these things.
Has anyone here written a blog against our government
or against our leader?
You could be imprisoned for life.
Has any body here converted from one religion to another?
If you converted from Islam to another religion,
you would be considered an apostate
and be sentenced to death by hanging.
Are there any homosexuals in this gruop?
Death sentence for you.
Anyone had sex outside of marriage?
Don't lift up your hand. (Laughter)
You would be charged with "ex-incompatible with chastity"
and be given one hundred lashes or if you are married
and you committed an adultry,
you'd be sentenced to death by stoning.
You'd literally be buried wrapped in shrouds
while people took turns throwing stones at your head
until you die.
If you haven't guessed already, I'm talking about
the Islamic Republic of Iran.
And the scenarios I've just given to you
are part of the discriminatory repressive rules under Sharia law
which is in Islamic base law that Iran has interpreted for its own penal code.
And it wasn't always like this.
It's only mostly been in the last thirty years.
Before, Iran was ruled by a monarchy and under the monarch,
under the Shah, people were fed up.
They wanted freedom they wanted democracy.
They wanted better human rights.
And there was an Islamic cleric by the name of Ayatolah Khomeini at the time
who promised the people there that he would come to Iran,
bring freedom to the people and step aside from politics.
But that's not what happened.
He came, he stayed and imposed a new era of tyrannical rule
grave human rights abuses.
Literally Iranian people's lives changed from one day to the next
and he spiraled the country back into the middle ages.
Imagine our own prime minister one day telling the women in this group
that we are forced to cover our heads
because our hair is emitting sexual vibes.
Sound ridiculous, doesn't it? Sounded ridiculous to Iranian women in Iran.
But this is what was happening.
My mom went from wearing the latest fashions
off the Paris runways including miniskirts
to literally the next day being forced to cover herself.
And this is symbolic of the greater repression and discriminatory laws
that were taking place on women in Iran.
Iran is under a gender apartheid
and women's lives are literally valued as being half of a man.
So let me give you an example,
if you get into a car accident and you kill a man or you injure him,
you have to pay twice as much in compensation money to him and his family
and it's called blood money,
than the amount you would have paid if you had injured or killed a woman.
My father was also victim to these new rules
under this regime and he was at the time,
the general manager of a hotel.
He was conducting business as usual
allowing alcohol, music, dancing,
mingling between men and women.
But under these new rules, cause you have to remember at this time in 1979
when the revolution was happening, there was so much chaos,
nobody knew what these new rules were.
He was allowing these things and one day the revolutionary guards
stormed into the hotel, beat him up, threw him into petty wagon,
off he was to jail where he was tortured, lashed some more
and they were gonna give him the death sentence.
They were going to execute him.
But out of some fate of luck, which we can talk about more another time,
we managed to get him out temporarily
and at that time he was on the first plane ride out of the country.
And rest of our family followed suit.
When I was about 2 years old, we immigrated here to Canada.
And I can say living here in Canada, in such a free nation,
I have never taken my freedoms and opportunities for granted.
And this is what I wanted for my people back from my homeland.
So when I heard in 2006 of a young girl, same name as me, who was in trouble,
I thought there's something I had to do about it.
Her name was Nazanin Fatehi.
She was 17 years old when she was in a park with her fifteen years old niece.
Three men attacked them, tried to rape them
and out of self defence Nazanin pulled out a knife, stabbed one of the men.
He later died in hospital and as a result,
she wasn't treated as a victim of attempted rape.
She was tried as a first rate criminal and sentenced to death by hanging.
And I was blown away by this story.
I was so upset and angry about the injustices of this case.
And I recalled back my days working as a global youth educator with the Red Cross
where we were teaching other students.
If not now then when? If not you then who?
So I said, okay if not me then who?
So I decided to start an international campaign to save her life
and we started with a simple petition which grew
and we managed to collect about
three hundred fifty thousand signitures on a petition.
And this was the weight I needed to approach government leaders here Canada,
at European Union, later at the United Nations
and get media attention to try to help her.
And, eventually there was so much pressure from individuals like you, like you, like you,
that the head of judiciary in Iran was forced to
grant stay of execution for her and order a new trial.
And in that new trial she was exonerated of all murder charges
and released from prison.
Now I've really shortened this story, a lot went on in her campaign.
But I learnt so much in that campaign and if I had to shorten it to three points --
One, I learnt that Nazanin Fatehi was not alone.
There was a hundred and sixty others at least juveniles waiting on death row in Iran.
And that again somebody had to do something
so that's when a group of us started Stop Child Executions organization
to try to put an end to executions of children.
Number two, I learnt that nothing is impossible.
Nothing -- even reversing the decision by a ruthless,
uncompromisng regime like the Islamic Republic of Iran.
And third I learnt about the power of the individual.
The power that each and every one of us has inside to make a difference.
I believe every one of us can change grand things
and that's mostly why I'm here today.
I saw that just little own me was able to help
instigate change that expanded out and we were able to save a human life.
So I want to encourage you to be the voices of the voiceless.
I want you to stand up when you see an injusice taking place.
Living in a democratic country, like Canada,
we have rights but we also have responsibilities.
Responsibilities to help those that are in need, those that are most vulnerable
those that don't have a voice whether it's children, animals, sometimes women.
And it doesn't have to be abroad.
It can be in our own back yards.
It can be people being bullied in our schools in our work places.
It can be victims of those who are being abused for their race, their religion --
Discrimination that they experience, racism, xeno-phobia, whatever have you.
And you can make a change in your own way.
In your own unique way.
If you are presented with a petition, sign it!
You have nothing to loose.
If those 350,000 people had the defeatist attitude
for Nazanin Fatehi, I don't know where she'd be today.
If you have a few spare minutes,
and you could write a letter to your local member of parliament
something you're concerned of. It makes a difference.
If you can join a rally, if you can volunteer your time
even one hour a year, it's something.
And as I said, it doesn't have to be through traditional political means.
It can be through you own talents, can be through music,
it can be through dancing, through art.
Each one of us has blessings and we can use it to advance humanity in our own way.
And I think we have come a long way as a society,
in terms of addressing human rights abuses.
But I think we have a long way to go, yet including at the United Nations level.
Now it would take a whole other TEDx series of talks
to talk about the flaws under the United Nations system.
But for now I can say that the UN has systemic problems
which paralyse it from enforcing rules that it has under its own charter.
Generally, recommendations are made to an offending country.
And they can decide whether to advance to work
on these recommendations or to reject it.
There is no real enforcement mechanism in place to force them into compliance.
Now, every once in a while you will hear
the security council at the United Nations,
authorizing humanitarian intervention in countries
where systematic and grave human rights abuses are taking place like genocide.
You can also sometimes hear of cases of individuals being
tried for crimes against humanity or war crimes.
But all these things are few and far between.
I would say generally the United Nations has been pretty silent
and inactive when it comes to grave human rights concerns.
And I'd like to give you some examples.
Okay, take the case of Neda. Neda Agha-Soltan.
Undoubtedly you probably saw her face
after the fraudulent presidential elections that took place
last year in the summer in Iran
when millions of people poured out onto the streets protesting
the elections and demanding greater human rights
and a path towards democracy.
You probably heard about the thousands of people
who were being arrested during these peaceful protests.
People being thrown in jail, tortured, raped,
people being put into sham trials
making forced confessions.
And people being bludgeoned to death on the street,
shot in plain daylight like Neda Agha-Soltan
who was shot in plain day light and we saw
videos of her life passing before our very eyes.
On almost every news channel CNN, BBC, everyday
until Michael Jackson died.
That's another story.
I want to know where Neda goes to seek justice --
where her family goes to seek justice.
Do they go to the government, or first of all go to the judiciary?
No, because in Iran there is no rule of law, there is no do process.
Do they go to the government?
No, because the government's the ones implicated in her murder.
So I guess the next logical step you'd ask yourself,
"Well, maybe she can go to the United Nations."
Maybe they could. But so far the UN has done nothing
for people like Neda or thousands who have been abused --
human rights have been abused under the regime of
Islamic Republic of Iran for the last thirty years.
What about the case of these young teenage boys
who were executed for homosexuality in Iran
-- this is despite the fact that Iran has signed
the international covenant on civil and political rights
and the charter of the rights of a child which forbids
the executions of those under the age of eighteen.
Where do their families seek justice and redress?
What about Asia Bibi who was recently in the news,
sentenced to death for saying something against
the Prophet Mahammad in Pakistan?
What about Souad, a Palestian woman
who was literally burnt alive by her brother in law under honor crimes
because she had sexual relations when she was seventeen years old.
What about Nasrin Sotoudeh, a prominent human rights activist in Iran
who's been imprisoned for months,
who's currently on a hunger strike.
And she's there simlply for defending the rights of others.
Similar case, Liu Xiaobo in China,
he is a Chinese literally critic and he was demanding democratic reform.
But the Chinese communist party have imprisoned him,
thankfully he just got a Nobel Peace Prize.
But he is still under arrest.
And I'm sure you recognize the picture, one of my role-models,
Aung San Suu Kyi who was imprisoned and
made to go under house arrest for more than fifteen years
after she was also advocating democracy and democratic reform in Burma.
Who do these, all these people turn to?
Where do they go when they want justice?
We need an international institution that deals with these injustices.
One that replaces the United Nations.
And that's where I'm gonna be concluding my talk
by sharing one of my dreams with you.
And that's the creation of an international institution
that parallels if not replaces the United Nations.
But instead of being called United Nations,
it would be called United People.
So hear me out.
Currently, the United Natinos is made up of nation states that are united together.
And often times, these states are undemocratic,
authoritarian regimes that do not represent the voice of the people,
they have heads of state that are not democraticly elected.
And so how do they bring across the concerns of the people?
That's why I think it's imperative for us to create the United People,
an institution where individuals, non-state actors,
like NGOs, civil soceity can come together and have their voice heard
where Iranians can have their true voice heard.
Because Ahmadinejad, president and
the supreme leader Ali Khamenei do not represent their voices.
I want somewhere these kinds of people can come
and have their voices heard.
And they can address global issues of concern on the environment,
on human rights, on other human security issues including HIV/AIDS
and other epidemics and diseases.
It would be that gathering spot.
We owe it to people like Aung San Suu Kyi, like Nasrin Sotoudeh, like Liu Xiaobo.
I believe no dream is too big.
And this is one of my dreams and I'm going to try to make it a goal.
I actually always say that if you have a dream make it a goal.
What's your deram?
Are you going to make it a goal?
Drop by drop, we can create an ocean of change,
and put out the fires of injustice in the world.
We can be a voice for the voiceless.
Thank you so much for hearing me out.
(Applause)