Novel Rights Initiate an author’s petition to stop human rights abuses in Syria. The petition first presented at the international Turin book fair in Italy (TURIN LINGOTTO FIERE, 8-12.5.2014) at Novel Rights stand. we are calling to authors and activists readers from all over the world to join us and sign this petition!
More than 4000 people already downloaded the recorded event!
“The Power of Literature and Human Rights”
We hope you enjoyed the inspiring debate with Authors: Marina Nemat, Gabriella Ambrosio and Novel Rights Founder Vered Cohen-Barzilay.
Download the Audio recording of the event
*Video and Photos by Tamar Levi
___________________________
What Is “Novel Rights”?
Novel Rights is a human rights ePublishing house operating through a model of Social Enterprise. It utilizes the power of literature to drive change and motivate people to take action in an innovative way, and so makes a very important contribution to the promotion of human rights values and protection of human rights. Our Vision: • Inspire the world to fully embrace and implement the values and principals of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. • Making the power of literature to drive a change recognized and utilized. • Nurture the power of authors whose sensitivity and intellectual ability to grasp the reality in its complicity is asset humanity has not been wise enough to take advantage of. • Recognize the power of every human to make a social change. Novel Rights’ innovative work is where we tie together the unnoticed genre of Human Rights Literature with the dynamically growing e-reading market and link them to human rights campaigns and organizations. Novel Rights is determined to bring knowledge and promote Human Rights & Literature through our e-Pub, events and workshops.
Novel Rights welcome Nasrin Sotoudeh and Hamid Ghassemi-Shall who has been released from prison in Iran!
Sotoudeh and Ghassemi-Shall both “Take Action” cases, added to Novel Rights e-Stories, calling for their immediate release from Evin prison. “We hoped for the freedom of Nasrin and Hamid and thank all our readers who participated at the suggested actions”, says Novel Rights founder, Vered Cohen Barzilay.
“Despite the good news we must not forget all the other people and Human Rights defenders that unlawfully prison in Iran and other countries in the world”.
Sotoudeh is a human rights lawyer in Iran. She has represented imprisoned Iranian opposition activists and politicians following the disputed June 2009 Iranian presidential elections as well as prisoners sentenced to death for crimes committed when they were minors. Her clients have included journalist Isa Saharkhiz, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, and Heshmat Tabarzadi, the head of the banned opposition group Democratic Front of Iran. She was arrested in September 2010 on charges of spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security and was imprisoned in solitary confinement in Evin Prison. In January 2011, Iranian authorities sentenced Sotoudeh to 11 years in prison, in addition to barring her from practicing law and from leaving the country for 20 years. An appeals court later reduced Sotoudeh’s prison sentence to six years, and her ban from working as a lawyer to ten years.
Ghassemi-Shall is an Iranian-Canadian shoe salesman who was arrested by Iran on espionage charges in 2008 and sentenced to death the following year.
Ghassemi-Shall traveled to Iran in May 2008 to visit his mother, who was unwell. He had last traveled to the country in 2004, on the first anniversary of his father’s death. While Ghassem-Shall was in Iran, his older brother Alborz was arrested, and Ghassemi-Shall’s Canadian passport was seized along with other family documents. Ghassem-Shall reported to the police station at the end of the month to retrieve his passport, but was also arrested.
In late 2009, Ghassemi-Shall was convicted of espionage for Mujahideen e-Khalq (MEK). The basis of the charge was an e-mail he allegedly sent to Alborz requesting information on the MEK’s behalf. Ghassemi-Shall’s family has denied that such an e-mail was written or sent.
____________________________________
DON’T DREAM-CREATE!
Novel Rights 