“My father worked for the Sheraton Hotel in Iran, and at the start of the Revolution, Islamic laws were being put into place and playing music became against the law,” said Nazanin Afshin-Jam, recounting why her family fled Iran when she was just a 1-year-old. “They imprisoned my father and tortured him and planned to execute him. By fate of luck, my mother’s contact of a contact of a contact got him out.”
Narrowly escaping death, Nazanin’s father fled to Spain, and the rest of the family followed two weeks later. They soon moved to France and then to Canada when she was 2.
“Our family left Iran two weeks before the borders closed,” Nazanin recalled. “We were lucky, but we had to leave our home and every possession and start over from scratch. At a very young age, I started asking, ‘Why do families have to leave because of somebody else? Why is there this injustice?’”
These questions would shape her future as a humanitarian, beauty queen, music artist and actress. Nazanin always worked hard at life, earning a glider’s license at 16, a pilot’s license at 17 and reaching the highest rank in the Royal Canadian Air Cadets. She earned an International Relations and Political Science degree from the University of British Columbia and participated in scholarship studies at Sciences Po Paris and England’s Herstmonceux Castle. After graduation, Nazanin put her education and passion to work at the Red Cross.
“When I worked with the Red Cross, I reached groups at a time raising awareness of different global issues,” she recalled, “but I felt I had to reach more people in a shorter amount of time. I have one mission in life, and that’s to help the most needy in the world. I wanted to gain a type of title so that I could reach the masses.”
In 2003, Nazanin attained such a title when she was crowned Miss Canada and then finished the Miss World pageant as first runner-up to Miss Ireland. While new-found fame gave her “the platform to speak on a lot of issues and actually get heard,” it also led to saving a young girl’s life.
As fate would have it, a Parisian man read about a teenage girl in Iran who fought off three men intending to rape her and her 15-year-old niece. While defending herself, she stabbed one of the men, who later died. The Iranian judiciary declared her guilty of murder. Though only 17 at the time, she was sentenced to hang. That girl’s name is Nazanin.
Having read the article, the man approached newscasters to call attention to the story, but they said killing minors is too common in Iran to warrant attention. Then, when he entered the girl’s name in an Internet search, the beauty queen with the same namesake dominated the results page. He reached out to her next.
“I was bothered that his young girl was to be executed despite the fact that three men attempted to rape her,” she recalled. “Why is she being treated as a criminal? The fact that no one picked this story up really, really bothered me.”
Using what resources she could, the beauty queen started a petition and collected 350,000 signatures. She then hand-delivered the petition boxes to the U.N., who sent them to the high commissioner on human rights in Geneva. They reminded the Iranian government that, as part of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, they agreed not to execute anyone under 18.
Nazanin noted, “They know they signed it, but they follow Sharia law, and they say Sharia law supercedes international law because it’s governed by God’s will. Under Sharia law, a girl is an adult at age 9 and a boy at age 15. Instead of executing a 9-year-old girl, now they wait until she turns 18 to carry out the execution.”
Various groups thankfully put enough pressure on the Iranian judiciary to grant the girl a new trial, and she was exonerated of all murder charges and freed from prison. Sadly, though, dozens of other Iranian children have reportedly been executed since 1990, and another 140 minors currently sit on death row. This led Nazanin to launch the Stop Child Executions Campaign to stop this barbaric practice altogether.
“We are the leading organization providing information and updates on the situation of minors on death row in Iran,” she explained. “We are an independent, non-political human rights group run by volunteers whose aim is to put a permanent end to child executions. We lobby governments and encourage private citizens to put pressure on offending countries. We help act as a liaison between families seeking legal counsel and human rights lawyers. We gather signatures for petitions, organize rallies, produce documentaries, participate in major human rights conferences and conduct speeches in parliaments worldwide.”
As for specific examples of executions, Nazanin cites 16-year-old Mona Mahmudnizhad who was executed in 1983 for teaching the Baha’i faith to children. There’s 16-year-old Atefeh Sahaaleh who was executed in 2004 for crimes against chastity. The judge, accusing her of having a sharp tongue, reportedly “took the pleasure” of putting the noose around her neck himself. And just two years ago, 18-year-old Makwan Moloudzadeh was executed for a homosexual act that he committed at age 13.
As a woman of many talents, Nazanin does whatever she can to support the cause. She recorded an album for Bodog Music titled Someday that addresses human rights issues. She portrays 19th-century Iranian poet and women’s rights martyr Táhirih in the upcoming film Mona’s Dream about the aforementioned Mona Mahmudnizhad. She joined 266 other Iranian notables in signing an open letter apologizing to people of the Baha’i faith for their persecution in Iran. She set up a “Wall of Shame” across from the United Nations when Ahmadinejad visited last September. And she’s currently working on a full report on child executions in Iran to be presented to the U.K. Parliament in May. Nazanin is clearly doing everything she can, but she also notes that 70 percent of the Iranian population is under 30 and that they’re instrumental in promoting change themselves.
“Every year the youth and general population becomes more and more disillusioned with the continued lies and false promises from the Supreme Leader and the President of Iran,” she explained. “In the last few years, the economy has tanked, there is a spike in poverty, drug abuse, prostitution and HIV/AIDS. Human rights abuses have intensified on the whole, and people are fed up with their quality of life and are searching for change. What has grown is the power and numbers in the women’s movement in Iran, particularly the One Million Signatures campaign to end discriminatory laws in Iran.”
“It’s a very young population and they are so in-tune with the West,” she continued. “They want democracy and human rights and freedom. It’s so unfortunate that the media portrays the people the same way they do these officials in power. It’s completely not true.”
Iranians stand up to their leaders, she added, but they’re persecuted for it. She tells how, on International Women’s Day a few years back, a group of women gathered to hold up placards saying they have the right to public assembly and equality. A group of 30 were imprisoned and two put in solitary confinement. She says bloggers are being imprisoned now and tortured with “electrical whips on their feet.”
“Iranian people are among the most secular people you’ll ever meet,” Nazanin explained, “but any time they rise up and speak out, they’re imprisoned, tortured or killed. That’s why we need to support the youth movement, the women’s rights movement and the labor unions — because they are the ones that want freedom and they’re ready for it. If we support them, the people will find a way.”
So how can we help support them?
Nazanin replied, “We encourage people to raise awareness and pressure the Iranian officials that enable these horrendous acts to take place — whether it’s signing a petition, writing a personal letter, telling your local members of parliament or Congress, telling your local news outlets, telling your friends and community members or finding creative ways to get the word out. We all have a part to play.”
As far as the Iranians themselves, Nazanin concluded, “Like we’ve seen in the Optor Revolution and the Rose Revolution and the Velvet Revolution, the students rise up, unite together and bring down the dictatorship. That’s what I see for the future of Iran.”
Photos of Nazanin courtesy of Chris Haylett
