Jailed Iranian women’s rights advocate Narges Mohammadi yesterday won the Nobel Peace Prize in a rebuke to Tehran’s theocratic leaders and a boost for anti-government protesters.
The award-making committee said the prize honored all those behind unprecedented demonstrations in Iran and called for the release of Mohammadi, 51, who has campaigned for both women’s rights and the abolition of the death penalty.
“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, head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. “If the Iranian authorities make the right decision, they will release her so that she can be present to receive this honor [in December], which is what we primarily hope for.”
Photo: Mohammadi family archive photos / Handout via Reuters
There was no immediate official reaction from Tehran, which calls the protests Western-led subversion, but semi-official news agency Fars said Mohammadi had “received her prize from the Westerners” after making headlines “due to her acts against the national security.”
Mohammadi is serving multiple sentences in Tehran’s Evin Prison amounting to about 12 years, the Front Line Defenders rights organization said.
Charges include spreading propaganda against the state.
She is the deputy head of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, a non-governmental organization led by Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Mohammadi is the 19th woman to win the 122-year-old prize and the first since Maria Ressa of the Philippines won the award in 2021 jointly with Russia’s Dmitry Muratov.
“This Nobel Prize will embolden Narges’ fight for human rights, but more importantly, this is in fact a prize for the ‘women, life and freedom’ movement,” Mohammadi’s husband, Taghi Rahmani, said at his home in Paris.
The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 11 million Swedish kronor (US$1 million) is to be presented in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.
Past winners range from Martin Luther King to Nelson Mandela.
Reiss-Andersen began her speech by saying, in Farsi, the words for “woman, life, freedom” — the protest slogan — and saying that the award recognized the hundreds of thousands who have opposed discrimination and oppression of women in Iran.
The award came as rights groups say that an Iranian teenage girl was hospitalized in a coma after a confrontation on the Tehran metro for not wearing a hijab.
Iranian authorities deny the reports.
Mohammadi’s win also came just over a year after the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s morality police for allegedly flouting the nation’s dress code for women.
That provoked nationwide protests, the biggest challenge to the Iranian government in years, and was met with a deadly crackdown.
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