An Iranian lawyer won Sunday, March 12 the human rights pleading competition of the Memorial of Caen (north-west of France), with her text “
Woman, life, murdered!
on the cause of women's rights "
seriously violated in Iran
".
Lawyer Maryam Meylan, 36, registered at the Geneva Bar, chose the emblematic case of Mahsa Amini.
The death on September 16, 2022, of this young Iranian woman detained by the morality police for having violated the strict dress code imposing in particular on women the wearing of the veil, triggered a major protest movement in Iran.
"
Choosing the case of Mahsa Amini was obvious: for me, this award means that the voice of the Iranian people has been heard
," she told AFP.
Holder of a bachelor's degree in English literature in Iran, she left the country ten years ago to study law in Switzerland.
“Serious violation of human rights”
"
A colleague told me about the competition in the fall and I was very keen to advocate for my country to the general public,
" she explained.
"
What is sad is the powerlessness of international legal mechanisms to stop this serious violation of human rights
", lamented this jurist.
"
Every day that passes, getting out of the country is a little more complicated
," she said, indicating that her dream was "
world peace
".
She won the first prize, that of the Memorial and the city of Caen.
Read alsoIran: for Fariba Hachtroudi, “helping students who demonstrate financially must be a priority”
The Bar Prize, awarded by the profession, was won by Maître Stéphanie Saint-Surin of the Port-au-Prince Bar, for her pleading "They
watched themselves die
" on the conditions of incarceration of Haitian prisoners.
Initiated in March 1989, the Mémorial de Caen pleadings competition has since welcomed 340 lawyers from all over the world who have come to plead the cause of a victim whose fundamental rights have been violated.
/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/N2FIVZQWLLD6P5LU4ANSJRRVXU.jpg)
