PRESS RELEASE
Tuesday 6th February 2007
Speaking Dates: Tuesday 5th February – Friday 9th February 2007
Ghazal Omid together with the Centre for Monitoring the Impact of Peace have joined forces to expose Iran’s War Curriculum and how the Iranian education system is preparing children for Martyrdom against the West. Ghazal Omid is one of the Iran’s most prominent Human Rights Activists. An outspoken woman, politically inclined since her youth, she has long stood up to the government of Iran because she believes in humanity and women’s rights. She insists on equality for men and women under a secular democratic regime which does not persecute people for their beliefs. Born in 1970 in Abadan, Iran, minutes from the Iraq border,
Ghazal is the youngest of eleven siblings. She is the only daughter and the youngest of four children borne by the second of her polygamist father's two wives.
At university, her defiance in speaking to other students about the indefensible dictates of government mullahs caused her to be continually watched and harassed by faculty spies. In retribution for daring to defy petty rules, she was abducted by the secret police. Escaping by jumping from the kidnapper's speeding car into a busy street, she was seriously injured but was temporarily rescued by the crowd. She was rearrested and avoided prison on trumped up charges, which typically result in a rapid death sentence, only by agreeing to non-disclosure and signing away her rights to pursue the case.
Soon after the kidnapping episode, another incident emphasized the urgency for her to leave the country. Whilst riding with her mother in a taxi, the driver, an undercover policewoman, pulled out her ID and threatened to arrest Ghazal for espionage. Realising her life was in danger; she hid among the chador clad female students in university while sympathetic university and embassy contacts arranged a visitor's visa to Europe, where she obtained a black market passport that she used to board a plane for Canada.
On her first visit to London she says “I am delighted to be here to discuss the plight of Iranian school children who are being indoctrinated into a lifestyle of hatred and violence that is preparing them to be martyrs against the west. The world must wake up to protect my countries children and by doing so protecting your children’s future.”
Fluent in three languages, Ghazal is the author of Living in Hell: “a true odyssey of a woman’s struggle in Islamic Iran against personal and political forces.” She appears regularly on CNN and FOX news, and continues to work toward her PhD and on future books.
For more information and interviews contact:
Simon Barrett Email: simon dot barrett (at) realite-EU dot org
Ghazal will speak at the Foreign Press Association, 11 Carlton House Terrace, on Wednesday 7th February at 12noon
www.ghazalomid.com
