Nazanin Boniadi, recipient of the 2023 Sydney Peace Prize, says Iran is playing word games when it comes to Gaza to win over progressives in the West.
When actor and activist Nazanin Boniadi was named the recipient of the 2023 Sydney Peace Prize in June, the selection committee hoped to swing momentum towards the movement she was building to support women’s rights and democracy in Iran.in which Boniadi played a CIA agent who was ultimately killed by terrorists – the world changed right under her nose.Hamas attacked Israel, and nobody was talking any more about “Women, Life, Freedom”, the battle cry of the pro-democracy movement in Iran.
“What we can’t turn a blind eye to is that the vast majority of Hamas funding comes from the Islamic Republic, as well as their training. And they fund Hezbollah as their proxies. If you look closely at the timing of this attack, it completely jeopardised Saudi-Israel normalisation, and it completely diverted the world’s attention away from the Islamic Republic’s domestic oppression of its own people.
“I felt this immense sense of responsibility to use my freedoms to defend and protect the Iranian people,” says Boniadi.“And what it unfortunately does is conflate Palestinian suffering and their rightful plight – wanting peace and justice and equality and a safe place to live – with this idea of resistance that is essentially terrorism.“We should be able to hold two truths in our minds at the same time.
“I felt this immense sense of responsibility to use my freedoms to defend and protect the Iranian people and amplify their voices in this fight for freedom.”Her public profile gave her a platform to raise awareness about women’s rights in Iran, and her activism ramped up last year after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for not wearing the hijab, sparking global protests.
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