A few days ago, the Martin Ennals Foundation became aware of the abusive remarks towards the LGBTQI + community published on the twitter account of our former Award winner, Mr. Emad Baghi.

By supporting human rights defenders, the Martin Ennals Foundation supports the rights and dignity of all, without discrimination of gender, religion or origin. Thus, the Foundation strongly condemns any form of discrimination or hate speech.

Mr Baghi was awarded the 2009 Martin Ennals Award (MEA) for his outstanding work to abolish death penalty in Iran. He spent several years in prison for his activism and faced multiple threats and harassment.

To date, we have not been able to reach Mr. Baghi and get an explanation about his tweets and his twitter account has been suspended. We will therefore refrain from commenting further on his remarks until we hear back from him.

• Read more about Emadeddine Baghi’s nomination to the MEA

• Learn more about the MEA’s nomination process

The Martin Ennals Foundation