New York, Oct 6: Imprisoned Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in recognition of her tireless campaigning for women’s rights and democracy and against the death penalty.
Mohammadi, 51, has kept up her activism despite numerous arrests by Iranian authorities and spending years behind bars. She has remained a leading light for nationwide, women-led protests, sparked by the death last year of a 22-year-old woman in police custody. Those demonstrations grew into one of the most intense challenges ever to Iran’s theocratic government.
“This prize is first and foremost a recognition of the very important work of a whole movement in Iran with its undisputed leader, Narges Mohammadi,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee who announced the prize in Oslo.
She said the committee hopes the prize “is an encouragement to continue the work in whichever form this movement finds to be fitting.” She also urged Iran to release Mohammadi in time for the prize ceremony on Dec. 10.
For nearly all of Mohammadi’s life, Iran has been governed by a Shiite theocracy headed by the country’s supreme leader. While women hold jobs, academic positions and even government appointments, their lives can be tightly controlled. Laws require all women to at least wear a headscarf, or hijab, to cover their hair as a sign of piety. Iran and neighboring Afghanistan remain the only countries that mandate it.
In a statement to The New York Times, Mohammadi said the “global support and recognition of my human rights advocacy makes me more resolved, more responsible, more passionate and more hopeful.”
“I also hope this recognition makes Iranians protesting for change stronger and more organized,” she added. “Victory is near.”
Mohammadi, an engineer by training, has been imprisoned 13 times and convicted five times, according to Reiss-Andersen. In total, she has been sentenced to 31 years in prison. Her most recent incarceration began when she was detained in 2021 after attending a memorial for a person killed in nationwide protests sparked by an increase in gasoline prices.
She has been held at Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, whose inmates include those with Western ties and political prisoners.
Her brother, Hamidreza Mohammadi, told The Associated Press by telephone that he has not been in touch with his sister but that the prize “means a lot to her.”
Despite that and the fact that “the prize means that the world has seen this movement,” the award will not affect the situation in Iran, he said.
“The regime will double down on the opposition, and it will have no effect on the regime,” he said. “They will just crush people.”
Waiting for the announcement “was nerve-wracking,” he said. But he knew immediately that his sister had won when he heard Reiss-Andersen saying three words in Farsi: “woman, life and freedom” — the slogan of the recent demonstrations.
“I felt very great,” said Hamidreza Mohammadi, who lives in Norway.
Narges Mohammadi is the 19th woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the second Iranian woman, after human rights activist Shirin Ebadi won the award in 2003
It’s the fifth time in the 122-year history of the awards that the peace prize has been given to someone who is in prison or under house arrest. Last year, the top human rights advocate in Belarus, Ales Bialiatski, was among the winners. He remains imprisoned. (Associated Press)
