Beauty queen out to save world

MISS WORLD 2003 first runner-up Nazanin Afshin-Jam of Canada is now building a career as a pop singer, but she is also using her celebrity to spearhead campaigns against injustices.

These initiatives include the campaign to free her namesake, Iranian teen Nazanin Fatehi.

Here’s an excerpt from the Reuters story:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters)–Move over, Bono. A budding Canadian pop singer inspired in part by the U2 rock star is setting out to save the world, and has scored an early success by leading an international campaign to free an Iranian teenage girl from a date with the hangman.

Nazanin Fatehi killed a would-be rapist in 2005 and was sentenced to death for premeditated murder. She would have joined about two-dozen other youngsters executed in the Islamic republic since 1990, according to Amnesty International, were it not for Nazanin Afshin-Jam, a Canadian singer born in Iran.

Afshin-Jam, a 28-year-old former Miss Canada, stirred up publicity by collecting 350,000 signatures in a petition addressed to the Iranian government and the United Nations. Her namesake was granted a new trial, where the original sentence was overturned. She was freed in January after two years behind bars, during which she attempted suicide. Blood money of $43,000 was paid, most of it raised by Afshin-Jam. She says the whole campaign left her broke.

The Vancouver resident has launched an effort to halt teen executions in Iran (http://www.stopchildexecutions.com), and is helping to send the uneducated Fatehi to school.

All photos courtesy of Agence France-Presse.

Here are some clips on YouTube.

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