Nazanin Boniadi Quotes

During most of the Bush administration, human rights and democracy in Egypt were on the front burner.

For about ten years now, the struggle for democracy and the respect of human rights has been in the focus point - if not a commodity - of political groups aiming to rise to power.

The only situation that I can't be in favour of is the lack of respect to human rights in Venezuela.

Two presidents pursued human rights policies that were serious and effective: Reagan and George W. Bush. They understood that American support for human rights activists is a moral imperative for us and also makes the world safer for us.

There are those who simply want to live their lives, and feel they cannot live the way they want to in Iran. Others are ideologically motivated: They will stay no matter what and try to change things.

What's surprising is that the people who fought against torture here are the communists.

My mother, for the last 20 years anyway, would not call herself a Marxist but a human rights activist.

Iran has a dismal record on human rights.

Ai Weiwei, who is both a widely admired conceptual artist and a fearless human-rights activist, has been on the bad side of the Chinese government for years.

Instead, in the absence of respect for human rights, science and its offspring technology have been used in this century as brutal instruments for oppression.

The Olympics brought a lot of development to Beijing, but I don't see that there have been any changes to human rights as a result of the Olympics.

Upholding human rights is not merely compatible with fighting terrorism, it is essential.

A political prisoner is someone who is out fighting for his or her people's rights and freedom and is imprisoned for that alone.

People say that human rights is a Western construct foisted on others. But that's not true. Equality, dignity, respect and justice are as much an integral part of the Islamic tradition.

Today we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction.

I am well aware that there are prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union, including some who have said they have chosen to resist the law because of religious reasons.

Terrorism can never be accepted. We must fight it together, with methods that do not compromise our respect for the rule of law and human rights, or are used as an excuse for others to do so.

Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood.

Lebanon is restless, Syria got its walking papers, Egypt is scheduling elections with more than one candidate, and even Saudi Arabia, whose rulers are perhaps more terrified of women than rulers anywhere else in the world, allowed limited municipal elections.

For many years as a foreign correspondent, I not only worked alongside human rights advocates, but considered myself one of them. To defend the rights of those who have none was the reason I became a journalist in the first place. Now, I see the human rights movement as opposing human rights.

Now the British are coming. I think Cameron should ask the Chinese government not to make people 'disappear' or to jail them merely because they have different opinions.

The free world should not wait for dictatorial regimes to consent to reform.

Americans should be free to make their own choice of life styles and private habits without being subject to discrimination or persecution.

Democratic elections by themselves do not assure that human rights will be enforced but they can put a country on the path to reform.

As civilization advances there is a continual change in the standard of human rights.