Iran’s imprisoned women’s rights campaigner, Narges Mohammadi, received the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, a blow to Tehran’s theocratic leaders and a boost to anti-government protesters, said Reuters.
The award presentation committee stated that the accolade honored individuals behind recent historic rallies in Iran, and urged the release of Mohammadi, 51, who has worked for three decades for women’s rights and the elimination of the death sentence.
Head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, told Reuters, “We hope to send the message to women all around the world that are living in conditions where they are systematically discriminated against: Have the courage; keep on going.”
According to the human rights organization Front Line Defenders, Mohammadi is serving numerous sentences totaling nearly 12 years in Tehran’s Evin Prison, merely one of many stints in the country’s prisons. Charges include promoting anti-state propaganda, among others.
She serves as the deputy executive director of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, a non-governmental organization founded by Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
Mohammadi has been arrested more than a dozen times in her life and has been incarcerated three times in Evin prison since 2012. She has been separated from her husband for 15 years and her children for close to a decade.
Mohammadi’s award comes a little over a year after Mahsa Amini died in morality police detention for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s clothing code for women.
This sparked widespread protests, the most serious threat to Iran’s authority in years, and was greeted with a murderous crackdown which claimed hundreds of lives.
Mohammadi is the 19th woman to receive the 122-year-old award, and the first since Maria Ressa of the Philippines shared the prize with Russia’s Dmitry Muratov in 2021.
Her award, worth 11 million Swedish crowns (about $1 million), will be presented in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish businessman Alfred Nobel, who in 1895 established the honor in his will.