Frankfurt/ Enskede/ Tehran, October 1, 2020 – Iran’s most prominent human rights defender, Nasrin Sotoudeh, has been awarded the Alternative Nobel Prize of the Swedish Right Livelihood Foundation. Four days earlier, Nasrin Sotoudeh, together with another political prisoner, had ended an almost 50-day hunger strike. Martin Lessenthin, spokesman of the board of the German Section of International Society for Human Rights (IGFM), welcomes the high award for Nasrin Sotoudeh and calls on the German government to finally address the catastrophic human rights situation in Iran appropriately and to implement sanctions against leading representatives of the Iranian regime”.

“Nasrin Sotoudeh stands for the Iranian democracy movement and for all Iranians who stand up for the rule of law and equal rights for women and men. Through her hunger strike, she demonstrated against the catastrophic prison conditions in Iranian prisons and the associated danger of infection with the corona virus,” Lessenthin continues.

Omid Nouripour, foreign policy spokesman for the Greens in the German Bundestag, has been the political godfather of Nasrin Sotoudeh since 2011. “It is good, just and important that Nasrin Sotoudeh is now receiving the Alternative Nobel Prize, because she is a symbolic figure in the struggle of so many people for freedom and self-determination. She desperately needs not only this award, but all the attention about her situation in prison and the abstruse and unbelievable and irresponsible imprisonment to which she is subjected,” said Nouripour.

The international jury stressed that Nasrin Sotoudeh, despite her imprisonment and the constant threats to her family, is a “defiant defender of the rule of law”. Under Iran’s repressive leadership, human rights and political opposition are severely restricted. Women face particularly harsh oppression and restrictions due to the government’s strict interpretation of Islamic law.

It was only on September 8 that the German Association of Judges (DRB) awarded Nasrin Sotoudeh the Human Rights Award 2020. In 2008 she already received the International Human Rights Prize Ludovic -Trarieux and in 2011 the Human Rights Prize of the City of Florence. In 2012 she was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament. Since April 2013 the renowned human rights activist has been a member of the board of trustees of the IGFM. In 2018 she received the Swedish Tucholsky Prize for persecuted and threatened writers.

Since 1980, 178 people from 70 countries have received the Right Livelihood Award. The Swedish Right Livelihood Foundation, which awards the prize, sees its role as a mouthpiece and protective shield for the prize winners. With Nasrin Sotoudeh, the US civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson, the indigenous right-wing and environmental activist Lottie Cunningham Wren from Nicaragua and the Belarusian pro-democracy activist Ales Bialiatski, as well as the non-governmental organization Human Rights Center “Viasna” were selected as the 2020 award winners.