A day before the election, I went to Spain to participate in a three-day seminar. On the fourth day, as I was prepared to go back to Iran, my country was not the same one that I had left. They had expelled all the foreign journalists and they had imprisoned a lot of the Iranian journalists. Some of my colleagues had been arrested and the rest were in hiding. Several people had been killed on the streets. My colleagues asked that instead of going back to Iran, I go to the United Nations and speak of what had happened.
During this time I met Mr. Ban Ki-moon twice, and I had a telephone conversation with him once. I have gone to the High Commissioner for Human Rights several times and have spoken with Mrs. Pillay. I have gone to the European Union several times.
Because of all of this, the government has confiscated all of my and my husband's possessions. My husband was imprisoned for several days and right now he's not allowed to leave the country. My sister is a university professor and has never had any political or social activities. In order to silence her, they arrested her and she was imprisoned for three weeks. The reason they released her after three weeks was that she had a heart problem and they were worried that she might die in prison. Continuously they are bothering my friends, my relatives, and my family.
Continuously I am threatened that wherever in the world I am, eventually they will reach me and kill me. You have to keep in mind that I have won the Nobel Peace Prize and there are a lot of cameras on me. When they dare to do this to me, you can imagine what they can do to ordinary people. Therefore, contrary to what you might think, the Iranian government is not very democratic and they are not kind to people.