Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian women’s rights advocate serving 12 years in jail, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a decision likely to anger Tehran’s theocratic government.
The award-making committee said the prize honoured those behind recent unprecedented demonstrations in Iran and called for the release of Mohammadi, 51, who has campaigned for three decades for women’s rights and abolition of the death penalty.
“We hope to send the message to women all around the world that are living in conditions where they are systematically discriminated: ‘Have the courage, keep on going’,” Berit Reiss-Andersen, head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told Reuters.
“We want to give the prize to encourage Narges Mohammadi and the hundreds of thousands of people who have been crying for exactly ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ in Iran,” she added, referring to the protest movement’s main slogan.
Who is Narges Mohammadi and why is she in prison?
Mohammadi, 51, is now the deputy head of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, a non-governmental organisation led by Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Mohammadi began her career as a campaigner 32 years ago as a student.
“My goal back then was to fight religious tyranny, which along with tradition and social customs has led to the deep repression of women” in Iran, she wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times on 16 September, the first anniversary of the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini that galvanised protests last year.
Arrested 13 times
Mohammadi is serving multiple sentences in Tehran’s Evin Prison amounting to about 12 years imprisonment, according to the Front Line Defenders rights organisation, one of the many periods she has been detained behind bars.
Charges include spreading propaganda against the state.
She has been in Evin prison three times since 2012, she wrote in the New York Times op-ed last month.
Mohammadi has been arrested by Iranian authorities 13 times and sentenced to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes, according to the Nobel Peace Prize website.
Family ‘exceptionally proud’
Mohammadi has been unable to see her children for seven years and her husband for 15 because of her incarceration, husband Taghi Rahmani says.
“I am exceptionally proud of you, and I miss you dearly,” said Mohammadi’s daughter.
The 17-year-old Kiana Rahmani, who lives in Paris with her father and brother, told Reuters that she was “extremely proud” of her mother.
Her prize, worth 11 million Swedish crowns or about $A1.6 million, will be presented in Oslo on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.
Mohammadi’s award came as rights groups reported that
.
Iranian authorities deny the reports.
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