Iranian activist wins Nobel Prize

OSLO, Norway -- Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi accepted her Nobel Peace Prize Wednesday, with a warning that civil liberties and human rights must not be allowed to fall prey to the war on terrorism in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.\nEbadi, the first Muslim woman and the first Iranian to win the award, said even Western democracies have allowed their strong traditions of freedom and basic rights to be eroded.\n"Regulations restricting human rights and basic freedoms ... have been justified and given legitimacy under the cloak of the war on terrorism," she said, speaking in Farsi.\nWithout naming the United States, she singled out the world's only superpower for holding prisoners from the war on terrorism in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "without the benefits of rights."\n"The concerns of human rights advocates increase when they observe that international human rights laws are breached not only by their recognized opponents," but by "Western democracies ... which count themselves among the initial codifiers of the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," she said.\nEbadi said she accepted the prize, which includes a $1.4 million award, on behalf of all women, Iranians, Muslims and others who strive for human rights worldwide.\n"Undoubtedly, my selection will be an inspiration to the masses of women striving to realize their rights, not only in Iran but throughout the region," said Ebadi, who was cited for her work on behalf of democracy and the rights of women and children.\nIn Stockholm, Sweden, meanwhile, 10 Nobel laureates, including six Americans, received Nobel prizes in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and economics from King Carl XVI Gustaf, the Swedish monarch. After the ceremony at Stockholm's concert hall, the laureates attended a banquet with the royal family and a host of dignitaries. \nVice President Al Gore.\nIn Iran, state television reported Ebadi had received the award, but carried no pictures of the ceremony, apparently because she didn't wear a headscarf. Hard-line vigilantes had issued statements vowing to punish her if she did not wear a scarf, according to newspaper reports.\nAsked about the award in Parliament, Iranian Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi said, "it's a source of pride for Iran that an Iranian is given the Nobel Peace Prize."\nNo special ceremonies were scheduled in Tehran, but people who have satellite dishes -- and many do, though they remain illegal -- said they would watch the ceremony on foreign channels.\nIranian reformers have looked to Ebadi to rally opposition to hard-liners who oppose any change to the conservative Islamic government and have denounced her as a "Western mercenary." She recently was given police bodyguards after receiving death threats.\nIn Stockholm, J.M. Coetzee, became the second South African to receive the literature prize, after Nadine Gordimer, who won in 1991. The intensely private Coetzee attended the prize ceremony, but passed on the traditional news conference.\nAmerican Paul C. Lauterbur and Briton Sir Peter Mansfield received the award in medicine, and Alexei A. Abrikosov of the United States and Russia, Anthony J. Leggett of the United States and Britain, and Russian Vitaly L. Ginzburg received the physics prize. Americans Peter Agre and Roderick MacKinnon won the chemistry prize, and American Robert F. Engle and Briton Clive W.J. Granger shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics.\nThe Nobel Prizes, first awarded in 1901, were created by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in his will and are always presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of his death in 1896.