Women’s Rights Activist Imprisoned in Iran Wins Nobel Peace Prize

A woman’s rights activist in Iran who organized protest actions from within Iran’s notorious Evin prison, Narges Mohammadi, won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

The Nobel Committee applauded Mohammadi for a lifetime of defiance of the repressive Islamist regime, which has resulted in 13 arrests in response to her organization of protests against a litany of human rights abuses in the country, including rape and sexual violence against political prisoners and widespread violence against women who do not or “improperly” wear the Islamic headscarf, or hijab.

Mohammadi reportedly organized acts of defiance against the regime in prison in the aftermath of the brutal state killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, whom members of Iran’s “morality police” beat to death in September 2022 because her hijab was allegedly worn incorrectly. Amini’s killing prompted protests nationwide demanding an end to the Islamic regime, to which Tehran responded with another wave of violence that killed more than 500 people:

“The embrace of the nation is open to everyone, but we will show no mercy to those who are hostile,” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, whose resume largely consisted of orchestrating the mass killings of between 5,000 and 30,000 anti-regime protesters in 1988, said in response to the Amini protests in December 2022.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

A protester holds a portrait of Iranian Mahsa Amini during a demonstration by Iranians living in Greece in central Athens on September 24, 2022, following the death of Amini, 22, after being arrested by the country’s morality police in Tehran (LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP).

The Iranian regime claimed a month after Amini’s death that the 22-year-old died of alleged complications from “surgery for a brain tumor at the age of eight,” a conclusion her family denounced as unreasonable. In reality, Amini fell into a coma after a severe beating and never woke up.

The Nobel Committee observed in its statement honoring Mohammadi as its 2023 laureate that she has been active in demanding respect for the human rights of women in her country long before the Mahsa Amini protests erupted, and was serving a 12-year prison sentence (that she continues to be imprisoned for today) when Amini was killed.

“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,” the committee said in its statement on Friday.

Mohammadi is an engineer by trade and began vocalizing support for women’s rights as a college student. Her calls for respect for human rights resulted in the loss of her engineering career in 2009.

“In 2011 Ms Mohammadi was arrested for the first time and sentenced to many years of imprisonment for her efforts to assist incarcerated activists and their families,” the Nobel Committee narrated. “Two years later, after her release on bail, Ms Mohammadi immersed herself in a campaign against use of the death penalty. … Her activism against the death penalty led to the re-arrest of Ms Mohammadi in 2015, and to a sentence of additional years behind walls.”

When the Mahsa Amini protests erupted, Mohammadi “expressed support for the demonstrators and organised solidarity actions among her fellow inmates.”

“The prison authorities responded by imposing even stricter conditions. Ms Mohammadi was prohibited from receiving calls and visitors. She nevertheless managed to smuggle out an article which the New York Times published on the one-year anniversary of Mahsa Jina Amini’s killing,” the Committee noted. “The message was: ‘The more of us they lock up, the stronger we become.’ From captivity, Ms Mohammadi has helped to ensure that the protests have not ebbed out.”

The Nobel Committee applauded Mohammadi for her “courageous fight for human rights, freedom, and democracy in Iran” and described the recognition as, by extension, applauding “the hundreds of thousands of people who, in the preceding year, have demonstrated against the theocratic regime’s policies of discrimination and oppression targeting women.”

Mohammadi is the fifth person to win the Nobel Peace Prize while in prison. The first was German journalist Carl von Ossietzky, who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp when he won in 1935. The 1991 laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, received her award while in prison in Myanmar; she would go on to serve as president of the country and be ousted in a coup in 2021. In 2010, the Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize to imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who died in prison in 2017, allegedly of cancer. Chinese state media dismissed widespread international outrage over his death as the griping of “losers.”

The fourth Nobel Peace Prize recipient to receive the award while in jail is Belarusian political prisoner Ales Bialiatski, one of last year’s winners.

Iranian state media, which has advocated for human rights rogue Kim Jong-un of North Korea to win the Nobel Peace Prize in the past, is at press time ignoring Mohammadi’s honor, instead offering wall-to-wall coverage of Iran’s alternative “Mustafa Prize.”

In this Saturday, April 11, 2020, file photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends a politburo meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea in Pyongyang (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP).

“The aim of the awards that is called by some as the Islamic Nobel Prize is to appreciate prominent scientists and scientific works in the Islamic world and to provide the ground for scientific cooperation and development worldwide,” Iran’s PressTV declared in its front-page coverage on Friday.

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