Iranian Women Honoured

From Khaleej Times:

Three Iranian women human rights campaigners Monday received the Lech Walesa Prize.

Shadi Sadr, Ladan Boroumand and Roya Boroumand were honoured for their promotion of “human rights, freedom of expression and democracy in Iran”, the Lech Walesa Foundation said in a statement.

Sadr, a legal expert and journalist, is a leading figure in the campaign against stoning as a punishment in Muslim countries, the foundation noted.

The Boroumands, meanwhile, are in charge of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation, which on its website logs human rights violations, and campaigns in particular against racism.

The 100,000-euro (147,000-dollar) prize was created in 2008 to “reward those who work for understanding and cooperation among nations in the name of freedom and the values of Solidarity,” the trade union which Walesa headed in the 1980s to combat Poland’s then communist regime.

Walesa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for his non-violent struggle. He became post-war Poland’s first democratically-elected president in 1990, a year after the collapse of communist rule.

Besides Walesa, the prize committee includes former anti-communist Czech dissident and ex-president Vaclav Havel, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and former Polish foreign minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski.

The inaugural prize last year went to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah for his contribution towards inter-faith dialogue, as well as charity work including sponsoring an operation to separate conjoined twin girls from Poland.