Nobel laureate warns Iran protests could still flare

MADRID – Iranian Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi said yesterday there was plenty of evidence that Iran’s recent elections were not transparent and warned that protests could flare up again.

The June 12 election which secured hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election, plunged Iran into its biggest internal crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution, exposed rifts in its ruling elite and set off a wave of unrest in which 36 people died.While mass protests died down in the streets of Tehran, Iran’s most famous human rights lawyer said sentiment had not calmed down.’The flame has dimmed, but it’s just waiting for an opportunity to flare up again,’ Ebadi told Reuters through a translator.Ebadi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace price in 2003, said human rights abuses had worsened under Ahmadinejad’s first term and called on the leader to listen to the voice of the Iranian people.’Unfortunately we have much higher inflation, higher unemployment, more cases of human rights abuses and much more censorship,’ she said.Ebadi was in Madrid to present her first novel based on the real story of an Iranian family divided first by the Shah and later by the 1979 Islamic revolution. Her book has been censored in Iran.- Nampa-Reuters