Jailed Iranian writer and human rights activist Narges Mohammadi received the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize in absentia on Sunday. Her 17-year-old children Kiana and Ali Rahmani represented her at the ceremony in Norway’s Oslo and collected the prize.
Mohammadi, 51, was awarded the peace prize for her fight against the oppression of women in her home country as well as for promoting human rights and freedom for all. She has been a vocal proponent of mass feminist disobedience against the mandatory wearing of the hijab for Iranian women.
The activist has been in Tehran’s Evin prison since 2021. 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.
In her Nobel lecture, delivered by her children, Mohammadi said that the people of Iran will undoubtedly continue their struggle.
“Continued resistance and non-violence are the best strategies,” she said. “This is the difficult path that Iranians have always taken, relying on their historical awareness and collective will. The Iranian people will dismantle obstruction and despotism through their persistence. Have no doubt – this is certain.”
Before the ceremony, her family had said that Mohammadi would begin a new hunger strike in prison to show solidarity towards the Baha’i religious minority in Iran, reported Al Jazeera. Last month, she went on a hunger strike to protest limits on medical care for her and other inmates, as well as the obligation for women to wear the hijab in Iran.
Mohammadi’s husband Taghi Rahmani had said that the Nobel Prize would give her a larger voice, even if her circumstances were likely to become more difficult.
“It’s a political prize and therefore there will be more pressure on Narges, but at the same time it is going to create a space for echoing the voice of the people” said Rahmani.
Awarding her the prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said in October that Mohammadi’s “brave struggle has come with tremendous personal costs”.
The jury had also said that it wants to 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.
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