Miss World Canada fights death penalty

By Laureen McMahon

Beauty may be only skin deep, but Nazanin Afshin-Jam, a 29-year-old St. Augustine's parishioner in Vancouver, has transformed her success as a beauty pageant winner into a truly meaningful victory, saving the lives of children threatened with execution in her native Iran.

Hossein Zabhi, Iran's Assistant Attorney General for Judicial Affairs, instructed all judges in the country Oct. 16 to stop sentencing convicted juveniles under 18 to the death penalty. He was bowing to international pressure from groups including Stop Child Executions, a human rights campaign founded by Afshin-Jam.

Afshin-Jam, who was crowned Miss World Canada in 2003 and was a runner-up to Miss World in the same year, told The B.C. Catholic that Iran was the only country last year continuing to impose the death penalty on children. According to Amnesty International, six juvenile offenders have been hanged this year.

Afshin-Jam founded a web site called Help Nazanin after learning that a Kurdish youngster, Nazanin Mahabad Fatehi, had been sentenced to death in Iran for stabbing a man who had attempted to rape her and her niece in a park in 2005.

Through Afshin-Jam's human rights campaign, 350,000 petitions were sent to the Iranian government and a new trial was granted. Fatehi, now an 18-year-old, was exonerated and released in January 2007.

Afshin-Jam knows quite a bit about what it's like to give up your human rights; when she was still a baby, her family members became political refugees in the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian revolution and her own father was sentenced to death.

"He was a manager for Sheraton Hotels," Afshin-Jam explained over a cup of tea at a Yaletown restaurant a few blocks from her apartment.

"When the new regime under the Ayatollah Khomeini came into power he was arrested and tortured because his hotel served alcohol and allowed dancing, which is strictly forbidden in Muslim practice. We were very lucky because a delay in carrying out the sentence gave him enough time to flee to Spain. My mother and sister and I followed about two months later but could take nothing with us, and we had to completely start over."

Afshin-Jam's parents eventually immigrated to Canada, where they hoped to be able to give their daughters a good education.

Afshin-Jam says she has been seriously interested in helping others since visiting a downtown soup kitchen when she was still a youngster with her St. Anthony's Parish CCD class in West Vancouver.

"I couldn't understand the kind of poverty I saw that day. Seeing first-hand the poorest of the city's poor turned into a defining moment in my life," she said.

"Driving home in the car, I noticed that my neighbourhood was filled with beautiful homes, and I began to wonder why some people have so much and others so little. I decided that some day I would try to find a way to help make things better, help people suffer less."

Afshin-Jam graduated from Kitsilano High School, where she had started a global issues club and participated in a mock United Nations. She also trained as a pilot licensed to fly both powered aircraft and gliders, achieving the highest rank in the Royal Canadian Air Cadets, that of Warrant Officer First Class.

At the University of B.C., Afshin-Jam earned a degree in political science and international relations and then joined the Red Cross as a global youth educator visiting high schools and teaching about land mines, children affected by war, cycles of poverty and disease, and natural disasters.

She also began to notice that sports stars and other celebrities have a far easier time drawing attention to their causes than the average person.

"People pay more attention when a cause is backed by someone with a high profile. It's not being famous that's important; it's what you can achieve with fame. When I discovered that the Miss World competition had already raised over $400 million for children, and that their motto is `beauty with a purpose,' I got very excited because they support young women making a difference in the world. I decided to send an application."

Although entering a beauty pageant is not typically supported by Iranian families, said Afshin-Jam, her mother, who is Catholic, and her, father who is Muslim, were behind her and had faith in her all the way.

Afshin-Jam says she thoroughly enjoyed the pageant experience, especially meeting the other contestants.

After being crowned Miss World Canada, she went on two weeks later to the international Miss World contest in China, where she ranked second behind the winner, Miss World Ireland, who happened to be her roommate and has remained a close friend.

Afshin-Jam began to travel widely and was invited to speak on many causes, such as raising aid for victims of the tsunami in India and Sri Lanka, for the earthquake victims of Bam in Iran, and supporting women who are fistula patients in Ethiopia. She has been invited to address audiences at prestigious venues such as Oxford University.

"The Iranians asked me speak on behalf of those who had suffered in the quake," said Afshin-Jam. "Many things changed for women in Iran after the revolution and there was a lot of repression of rights. Today there is resurgent interest in restoring the equality of women, which actually had a long history in the country."

Just before learning about the plight of Nazanin Fatehi, Afshin-Jam wrote and produced an album of songs which helped her to publicize various causes and later helped her draw attention to the fact that Iran was still sentencing children to death. Through her on-line Help Nazanin web page thousands of people signed the petition which resulted in a new trial for the girl. The two have never met, said Afshin-Jam, but communicate by e-mail, and they are consulting on a book about Fatehi's experiences.

"When she was freed, many parents in Iran called me to help get their son or daughter released," said Afshin-Jam. "There are 140 minors currently on death row in Iran, and as Amnesty International has reported, six have been executed this year. We have managed to save half a dozen in 2008 through international pressure, but we need more people involved. We are not just interested in saving one or two, but in changing the law to save them all."

Afshin-Jam has been awarded the Hero for Human Rights Award from the Youth for Human Rights International and Artists for Human Rights at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Last February she was appointed by the prime minister's office to the board of directors of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation.

In September, just after she had made a presentation on child executions to the World Union of Catholic Women's Organizations in Winnipeg, Afshin-Jam organized Ahmadinejad's Wall of Shame, a rally staged outside the United Nations in New York City to highlight the execution of children.

The wall featured photos and stories of children executed in Iran, and petitions were available urging immediate changes to Iranian law.

"We had people bussed in from Los Angeles to Toronto. A Christian pastor and two ex-political-prisoners spoke. We were very pleased with the response from the media and from others. I am really praying that we will be able to see these laws passed for good," said Afshin-Jam.

Stop Child Executions was among 300 other non-government organizations from 82 countries which called on the UN General Assembly in its recent annual debate on the Rights of the Child to take urgent action to end the death penalty for minors.

Afshin-Jam's dream is to make child execution a thing of the past everywhere in the world, and she will not rest, she said, until she makes it come true.

"We look forward to Iran abiding by this recent announcement," she said, "and seeing these changes fully implemented into law."