THE Nobel Peace Prize was on Friday awarded to imprisoned rights campaigner Narges Mohammadi, honoured for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran.
Mohammadi’s award comes after a wave of protests that swept Iran after the death in custody a year ago of a young Iranian Kurd, Mahsa Amini, arrested for violating Iran’s strict dress rules for women.
Mohammadi, a 51-year-old journalist and activist, has spent much of the past two decades in and out of jail for her campaign against the mandatory hijab for women and the death penalty.
She is the vice-president of the Defenders of Human Rights Centre founded by Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, herself a Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 2003.
Mohammadi was honoured “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.
“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,” Reiss-Andersen said in the jury’s citation.
Speaking to reporters after the announcement, she called for Mohammadi’s release.
“If the Iranian authorities make the right decision, they will release her. So she can be present to receive this honour, which is what we primarily hope for,” she said.
The recent protests in Iran “accelerated the process of realising democracy, freedom and equality in Iran,” a process that is now “irreversible”, Mohammadi told AFP last month in a letter written from her prison cell.
She and three other women held with her at Tehran’s Evin prison burned their hijabs to mark the anniversary of Amini’s death on September 16.
Iran is ranked 143rd out of 146 countries on the World Economic Forum’s gender equality ranking.
