OSLO — Jailed Iranian human rights defender, Narges Mohammadi has won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize. Narges bags the Award while serving a jail term in Iran.
The 2023 Nobel Peace Prize has been accorded to imprisoned Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi for “her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee declared in Oslo on Friday, October 6.
Mohammadi, an engineer by profession, has been jailed thirteen times and convicted five times, noted Reiss-Andersen. Cumulatively, she has been incarcerated for 31 years. Her most current imprisonment began when she was held up in 2021 after attending a memorial for a individual who died in country-wide mass protests attributed to an increase in gasoline costs.
She is detained at Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, whose inmates entail those with Western connections alongside political prisoners.
It “recognizes the hundreds of thousands of people who in the preceding year have demonstrated against the theocratic regimes’ policies of discrimination and oppression targeting women,” said the Nobel Committee, while awarding Mohammadi the prize.
“Her brave struggle has come with tremendous personal costs. Altogether, the regime has arrested her 13 times, convicted her five times, and sentenced her to a total of 31 years in prison, and 154 lashes,” said the Norwegian Nobel Committee chair Berit Reiss-Andersen at the announcement ceremony.
“I am so pleased for her. It makes me cry. She did so much for all of us in Evin. Narges is an inspiration and a pillar to the women in the female ward in Evin for her fearless fight against violation of women’s rights, use of solitary confinement and execution in the judicial system in Iran. This award belongs to every single Iranian woman who, one way or another, has been and remain to be a victim of injustice in Iran,” said Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian dual-citizen who were in the same cell with Mohammadi in Evin.
Mohammadi has been spearheading human rights activities in Iran. She leads human rights activists, who advocate for women’s rights alongside the relinquishing of the death penalty and reforms in prison conditions.
Therefore, the award is perceived as an acknowledgement to the Woman, Life, Freedom formation in Iran, which dominated the clerical call last year, but has been suppressed with several activists either killed or in prison.
The latest protests were caused by the demise in police cell of the young Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini after she had been detained for not wearing the hijab in accordance with Iranian rules. The struggle over the wearing of the hijab persists.
Edited by Judy J. Rotich and Newsdesk Manager
