Iranian activist, Shadi Sadr wins Amnesty International award

Shadi Sadr

Iranian women’s rights activist, Shadi Sadr won Amnesty International’s Golden Butterfly award for the most imposing and inspiring activist at The Movies that Matter Festival.

Shadi Sadr’s human rights activities are depicted in Farid Haerinejad and Mohammad Kazemi's film Women in Shroud, a documentary that follows the struggles of a number of women’s rights activists and their campaign to stop the harsh law of stoning in Iran.

Shadi Sadr has announced that the reward belongs to all the activists involved in the “Stop Stoning Campaign.”

Ms. Sadr has also announced that she will donate the €5,000 monetary award included in the prize to a project that proposes to document the memoirs of women's struggles in Iran during the first decade following the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Sadr maintains that the memoirs of this generation of women have never been recorded and this prize may become a starting point for documenting this portion of women’s history in Iran.

Shadi Sadr, who has been arrested on several occasions by the Iranian authorities, is an Iranian lawyer, activist and former prisoner of conscience and one of the founders of the “Stop Stoning Campaign.”

She was also in charge of a counselling centre for women (RAHI) that has meanwhile been closed by the Iranian government. She has currently developed an action-oriented web site that campaigns for equal rights for women.

In the last year, Shadi Sadr was also the recipient of human rights awards from Dutch and US foreign ministries. Sadr left Iran last September and is currently residing in Germany.