The 2023 Nobel Peace Prize was on Friday awarded to jailed Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi for her fight against the oppression of women in the country as well as for promoting human rights and freedom for all.
The jury said that the 51-year-old has campaigned against the Iranian government’s use of death penalty and the alleged systematic use of torture and sexualised violence against political prisoners, especially women, in the country’s prisons.
Mohammadi became involved with the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Tehran in 2003. The human rights organisation was founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.
The jury said that Mohammadi’s “brave struggle has come with tremendous personal costs”.
The Iranian government has arrested Mohammadi 13 times, convicted her five times and sentenced her to a total of 31 years in prison with 154 lashes, the jury said.
Mohammadi was selected by the Norwegian Nobel Committee and will receive about Rs 8.2 crore.
The jury said that it wants to also recognise “the hundreds of thousands of people who have demonstrated against the [Iranian] theocratic regime’s policies of discrimination and oppression targeting women”.
In 2022, the death of a young Kurdish woman in the Iranian morality police’s custody sparked one of the largest political demonstrations against the government since the Iranian revolution of 1979. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians protested the authorities’ oppression of women. The government eventually cracked down on the protestors, leading to hundreds of deaths and thousands of people getting injured. Thousands were arrested.
The jury on Friday said that the slogan used by the protestors, “Woman-Life-Freedom”, “suitably expresses the dedication and work” of Mohammadi.
In 2022, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to jailed Belarusian human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski, Russian human rights organisation Memorial and Ukrainian human rights organisation Center for Civil Liberties for promoting “the right to criticise power” and protecting citizen’s fundamental rights.
This year, Nobel winners in physics, medicine, chemistry and literature were announced earlier this week.
The Nobel Prize in Economics will be announced on October 9. The prizes will be handed out to the winners on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death.
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