Maryam Nayeb Yazdi

Early life and education

Yazdi was born in Mashad, Iran. In 1989 she moved to Toronto, Canada, to study. She earned a degree in English from York University.

Career

Yazdi has been a writer and editor at Creative Media House Canada in Toronto since January 2003.

In 2008, she was appointed editor-in-chief of a magazine about Tirgan, the Iranian culture festival. She also founded Faryan, an online magazine that sought to link people in Iran with Iranians abroad.

Persian2English

When Iranian authorities began to suppress protest movements in 2009, Yazdi began to focus on the promotion of democracy in Iran. In 2009 she founded the Persian2English blog. Run by “a team of translators, editors, human rights activists and citizen journalists” who aim “to break the language barrier on human rights” by exposing “the human rights violations in Iran to the international audience,” Persian2English is a project of Iran Human Rights (IHR), a Norway-based international NGO that is focused on ending capital punishment in Iran. Yazdi is also the North American spokesperson for IHR.

Writings

On October 23, 2010, Yazdi encouraged readers to participate in a hunger strike for political prisoners in Iran and for Iranians who were on a hunger strike in Greece.

On March 13, 2012, the Huffington Post published an article in which Yazdi called Iran “one of the most sorry excuses for Islam I have ever observed in my life,” and added that even “more shameful than the Iranian regime are Muslims around the world who remain silent to the atrocities committed by the Iranian regime in the name of religion.”

On August 11, 2012, she reported on the efforts of Beygom Yadi Jamaloei to prevent the illegal execution of her son, Gholamreza Khosravi, in Iran.

On February 13, 2013, Yazdi wrote about Majid Tavakoli, an Iranian student activist who would not be able to accept the 2013 Student Peace Prize in person in Trondheim, Norway, because he was in an Iranian prison.

Saeed Malekpour case

Yazdi is the co-founder and spokesperson for the global campaign to save Canadian Permanent Resident Saeed Malekpour, who, while visiting his sick father in Iran in 2008, was arrested on charges of spreading corruption through a web program he had developed, and who in 2010 was placed on Iran's death row. Yazdi appeared on CTV and other media numerous times in connection with the Malekpour case. On January 18, 2012, Yazdi told the Guardian about “discrepancies in Saeed's case file that were supposed to be reviewed and investigated by the revolutionary court” but that were ignored by the judge, who “reissued the death sentence anyway.” On January 23, 2012, reporting that Malekpour had lost his last appeal, the Toronto Star quoted Yazdi as saying that “Saeed is still unaware that his death sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court” because his “only access to the outside world” was “a two-minute phone call once a week.” After it was reported that Iran has suspended Malekpour's sentence, it was Yazdi who told the media that the report had not been confirmed and that family would not be making any comment.

Other professional activities

Maryam Yazdi is among the influential people selected to speak in May 2013 at the fifth annual Oslo Freedom Forum. Her talk discusses the ways Iranian authorities use the death penalty to suppress civil society. The three-day summit in Norway explored how best to challenge authoritarianism and promote free and open societies.

In October 2012, lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who had been held illegally in Iran's Evin Prison since 2010, held a hunger strike. In sympathy, Yazdi helped organize a “Tweet Storm.” Yazdi is the most trusted administrator of the Tenth Wall Family of Facebook pages as well as Free Human Rights Lawyers and Advocates on Facebook, through which she may post and edit fully & alter policies, including posting to the linked Twitter account @MarkGKirshner as well as her own @Maryamnayebyazd.

Honors and awards

In 2013, the Governor General of Canada awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal to Nayeb Yazdi in recognition of her human-rights achievements.