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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
More than skin deep
Nazanin Afshin-Jam came to the aid of another woman named Nazanin who was sentenced to death for killing a man who tried to rape her. (WAYNE CUDDINGTON / POSTMEDIA NEWS)
Defence Minister Peter MacKay married Nazanin Afshin-Jam in Mexico in January. (ALEC & T. PHOTOGRAPHY / POSTMEDIA NEWS)
OTTAWA -- Iranian-born Nazanin Afshin-Jam is a former Miss World Canada, a charismatic human-rights crusader and now an author.
That's not all. She has also been a singer and a model. And if all else fails, this 33-year-old has a good trade to fall back on: a former air cadet with the rank of warrant officer, first class, Afshin-Jam has her pilot's licence, which could come in handy if her husband, Defence Minister Peter MacKay, ever needs another quick exit from, say, Labrador.
One is initially struck by Afshin-Jam's beauty, the kind of beauty that makes men weak in the knees and causes passersby to stop and stare in awe. But this is also beauty laced with strong opinions and definitive actions aimed at making the world a better place.
Some of those opinions will be aired publicly May 31 when, courtesy of the Ottawa International Writers Festival, Afshin-Jam delivers a talk about her new book The Tale of Two Nazanins: A Teenager on Death Row in Iran and the Canadian Who Vowed to Save Her.
Afshin-Jam says being married to the man previously considered Parliament Hill's most eligible bachelor will not stop her from speaking out on international human-rights issues, even if she has to criticize Canadian government policy.
"I will speak my mind if I think there is something that I don't agree with, that is against government policy," Afshin-Jam, founder of the agency Stop Child Executions, said in a recent interview.
"That's the beauty of living in Canada, living under a democratic system and having freedom of expression. I'll never go back to a country that suppresses rights. So, if by entering a marriage, that would silence me, that would totally go against all my principles."
Afshin-Jam says she met MacKay through her work with international human-rights organizations and the minister was supportive of her causes even before their secretive January wedding in Mexico.
"He never said to me, 'Now we're married, you can't say certain things or you have to toe our party line.' Absolutely not. I've said to him from the beginning I have certain opinions and differences."
Afshin-Jam especially has opinions about totalitarian regimes that put children on death row. Those opinions are expressed forcefully in her new book.
Through alternating chapters, the book tells the life story of Afshin-Jam, who came to Canada at two with her family from Iran, via Spain, and the story of Nazanin Fatehi, a poor Iranian teenager sentenced to death for having fatally stabbed a man who, along with some accomplices, was trying to rape her and her young niece Somayeh.
The book opens with the Nazanin in Canada receiving an email from a stranger only identified as Vincent asking her to help the woman with the same first name. The Iranian Nazanin had already been imprisoned for a year, had tried to commit suicide a number of times and was sentenced to hang.
Vincent had been researching the Iranian Nazanin online and unintentionally kept landing on websites about the Canadian Nazanin. The Canadian one was a high-profile human-rights advocate. Maybe she could help. And help she did.
"Fate and Google" brought the two Nazanins together, Afshin-Jam says.
After receiving Vincent's email, the Canadian Nazanin started to mine her contacts at home and abroad in the human-rights community to put pressure on the Iranian government to give the young woman a new trial.
An Iranian lawyer agreed to help but demanded a retainer. That bill was paid by Belinda Stronach, a millionaire MP who had ditched the Conservatives and her sweetheart, Peter MacKay, to become a Liberal cabinet minister in the Paul Martin government.
Stronach's name appears, very favourably, a few times in The Two Nazanins. While the young Iranian was eventually acquitted of murder, she is still obliged to pay a fine of about $45,000 to the family of the man she stabbed. Fundraising in Canada began. Stronach kicked in the last $10,000.
After a two-year ordeal, the Iranian Nazanin was released from prison Jan. 31, 2007, and returned to her family. After a few years, she vanished, but not before pouring out her life story in several taped telephone calls.
"We're very worried about her," says Afshin-Jam.
Afshin-Jam learned many lessons from her experience in mobilizing support, right up to the United Nations, to free Nazanin from jail. Those lessons are being used again and again in her campaigns to free children on death row. Sometimes that freedom comes amid a blaze of international publicity; sometimes quiet behind-the-scenes lobbying is more productive. When Afshin-Jam wrote her book, there were 160 such children in Iran alone awaiting capital punishment.
"I don't want people to leave the book thinking you have to be a Miss Canada, a sports star or a celebrity to be able to make change," she says emphatically.
"But what I did learn in the Nazanin Fatehi campaign is that certain things can help garner media attention. In my case, they were curious about, 'Oh, Miss Canada trying to help somebody.' It just plays to cliché."
Yes, being a beauty queen helped get attention initially to aid Nazanin Fatehi, Afshin-Jam says.
But anyone with "passion" and an ability to work hard can move mountains, she suggests.
-- Postmedia News
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 20, 2012 A4
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