Narges Mohammadi is one of the women leading the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising.
Oslo:
Jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi denounced a “tyrannical and misogynistic” government in Iran on Sunday in a speech given by her children, who accepted the prize in her absence.
“The Iranian people will dismantle obstruction and arbitrariness through their perseverance,” Mohammadi said in the speech.
“Don’t doubt it – that’s for sure,” she said.
Mohammadi, who campaigns against compulsory hijab-wearing and the death penalty in Iran, has been held in Tehran's Evin Prison since 2021.
Instead, her 17-year-old twins Ali and Kiana, both of whom have lived in exile in France since 2015, accepted the award on her behalf and read a speech that she was able to smuggle out of her cell.
Witness the moment Narges Mohammadi's children accepted this year's Nobel Peace Prize medal and diploma on behalf of their currently imprisoned mother. Mohammadi was awarded the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in the field of human rights.
Learn more: https://t.co/8gkwD5Cuqbpic.twitter.com/NdB3HXNZNv
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) December 10, 2023
“I am a Middle Eastern woman and come from a region that, despite its rich civilization, is now caught in the midst of war, terrorism and extremism,” she said in a message written “behind the world’s high, cold walls.” of a prison”.
“I am an Iranian woman, a proud and honorable contributor to civilization, currently under the oppression of a despotic religious government,” she said.
– Empty chair –
At the ceremony, where a portrait of the laureate was displayed, a symbolic chair remained empty.
Mohammadi is one of the women leading the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising that sparked months of protests across Iran following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
Amini, an Iranian Kurdish woman, died on September 16, 2022 while being detained by Iranian religious police for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic's dress code for women.
The movement, which arose after Amini's death, seeks an end to the requirement for headscarves for all women in Iran and an end to the government in Tehran led by Muslim clerics.
“The compulsory hijab imposed by the government is neither a religious obligation nor a cultural tradition, but rather a means of maintaining authority and submission throughout society,” Mohammadi said in the speech, which he read to the Norwegian royal family and foreign dignitaries .
She said Iran was “fundamentally alienating itself from its people” and denounced government repression, the lack of an independent justice system, propaganda and censorship, and corruption.
In contrast to the fanfare in Oslo, Mohammadi would simultaneously observe a hunger strike in solidarity with the Baha'i community, according to her family.
Representatives of the Baha'i, Iran's largest religious minority, say they are the target of targeted discrimination.
– In Mandela's footsteps –
Mohammadi is the fifth laureate in the more than 120-year history of the Nobel Peace Prize to receive the award while in prison.
She follows the German Carl von Ossietzky, the Myanmar woman Aung San Suu Kyi, the Chinese Liu Xiaobo and the Belarusian Ales Beliatski.
“Narges Mohammadi's struggle is also comparable to that of Albert Lutuli, Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, which took place over a period of more than 30 years before the apartheid system ended in South Africa,” said the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said Berit Reiss -Andersen in a speech.
Mohammadi was arrested 13 times, sentenced five times to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes, and has spent much of the last two decades in and out of prison.
Her twin children, who haven't seen their mother in almost nine years, don't know if they'll ever see her alive again.
“Personally, I'm more pessimistic,” Kiana Mohammadi told reporters on Saturday, while her brother Ali said he remained “very, very optimistic.”
The protests in Iran triggered by Amini's death were massively suppressed.
According to the Iran Human Rights Group (IHR), 551 protesters, including dozens of women and children, were killed by security forces and thousands were arrested.
On Saturday, the lawyer for Amini's family said that her parents and brother, who were scheduled to receive the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought at a ceremony on December 13 in Amini's name, would be banned from leaving Iran.
The winners of the other Nobel Prizes for literature, chemistry, medicine, physics and economics received their awards from the Swedish King Carl XVI. Gustaf at a separate ceremony in Sweden before heading to a lavish banquet at Stockholm City Hall.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)