GENEVA (AFP) - When Iranian police closed her human rights group's office in Tehran last December, Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi recalls she told them: "You might have closed my apartment, but you can't shut my mouth."

Ebadi and her Defenders Human Rights Centre were just a small fraction of the nearly 700 activists and 83 nongovernmental organisations who suffered repression in 66 countries in 2008, according to an international observatory.

They included civil liberties campaigners, indigenous people seeking land rights, lawyers helping immigrants and even judges, the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) and World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) said on Friday.

At least 49 trade unionists were reportedly killed in Colombia, and many other cases of abuse of defenders around the world were thought to have not been documented, according to campaigners.

While Iran was in post-election turmoil--with one of Ebadi's associates, lawyer Abdolfatah Soltani, among several hundred reported arrests this week--she turned up as scheduled at the launch of the observatory's annual report in Geneva.

Her testimony was meant as a prime example of the kind of repression highlighted in the report, entitled "Steadfast in Protest".

But the 2003 Nobel prize winner was inevitably quizzed about attempts by Iranian authorities to quell protests in Tehran.

"I condemn all human rights violations. I am not an opposition leader, I am a human rights defender," she protested, emphasising that she was not seeking regime change.

Her key demands were for an end to violence, the release of those detained, and for fresh elections with international observers "to prevent any objections afterwards".

Some dictators had been brought to power initially in democratic elections, Ebadi pointed out.

"The legitimacy of a government is not only derived from the ballot box," she explained, "but when it is also respectful of human rights."

Ebadi, a lawyer, simply pointed to "many difficulties" faced by rights activists over the years in Iran.

"Some of these difficulties were created by the Iranian laws which were created to put obstacles in the way of nongovernmental organisations," she added.

The report's chapter on Iran said there was no change in a "systematic campaign of repression" against women's right's activists, including prison sentences, "lashings for writing and publishing articles" and restrictions on travel.

It also documented the jailing of campaigners for minority Kurds and "slandering campaign" against Baha'i religious minority activists, and arrests and floggings of trade unionists.

The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders issued urgent notices for 34 people or organisations in Iran last year.

Ebadi, 61, insisted that the closure of her Defenders Human Rights Centre in Tehran was illegal.

"Since the doors remained closed, we filed a legal complaint," she explained.

"But for the moment the authorities haven't looked at our case."

The international observatory intervened four times for Ebadi last year, including over death threats. She did not mention them. (By PETER CAPELLA/AFP)