Who is Narges Mohammadi, the jailed Nobel Peace laureate?

Dubai: Imprisoned Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in recognition of her tireless campaigning for women’s rights and democracy, and against the death penalty.

Mohammadi, 51, has kept up her activism despite numerous arrests by Iranian authorities and spending years behind bars. She has remained a leading light for nationwide, women-led protests sparked by the death last year of a 22-year-old woman in police custody that have grown into one of the most intense challenges to Iran’s theocratic government.

Narges Mohammadi in Tehran, Iran, in 2021.Credit: Reihane Taravati via AP

Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, began Friday’s announcement with the words, “Woman, Life, Freedom” in Farsi – the slogan of the demonstrations in Iran.

“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,” Reiss-Andersen said.

“This prize is first and foremost a recognition of the very important work of a whole movement in Iran with its undisputed leader, Narges Mohammadi.”

Iranian-born speaker of the Norwegian parliament Masud Gharahkhani holds a poster, saying in Iranian and Norwegian “Woman, life, freedom”, in his office in Oslo, Norway, minutes after the announcement.Credit: AP

Reiss-Andersen urged Iran to release Mohammadi in time for the prize ceremony on December 10.

For nearly all of Mohammadi’s life, Iran has been governed by a Shiite theocracy headed by the country’s supreme leader. While women hold jobs, academic positions and even government appointments, their lives are tightly controlled. Women are required by law to wear a headscarf, or hijab, to cover their hair. Iran and neighbouring Afghanistan remain the only countries to mandate that.

In a statement released after the Nobel announcement, Mohammadi said she would “never stop striving for the realisation of democracy, freedom and equality”.

“Surely, the Nobel Peace Prize will make me more resilient, determined, hopeful and enthusiastic on this path, and it will accelerate my pace,” she said in the statement, prepared in advance in case she was named the Nobel laureate.

An engineer by training, Mohammadi’s latest incarceration began when she was detained in 2021 after attending a memorial for a person killed in nationwide protests.

She has been held at Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, whose inmates include those with Western ties and political prisoners.

US President Joe Biden and Amnesty International joined calls for Mohammadi’s immediate release.

“This award is a recognition that, even as she is currently and unjustly held in Evin Prison, the world still hears the clarion voice of Narges Mohammadi calling for freedom and equality,” Biden said in a statement. “I urge the government in Iran to immediately release her and her fellow gender equality advocates from captivity.”

The prize sent “a clear message to the Iranian authorities that their crackdown on peaceful critics and human rights defenders will not go unchallenged”, Amnesty said.

Mohammadi’s brother, Hamidreza, said that while “the prize means that the world has seen this movement”, it would not affect the situation in Iran.

“The regime will double down on the opposition” he said. “They will just crush people.”

Mohammadi’s husband, Taghi Rahmani, who lives in exile in Paris with their children, 16-year-old twins, said his wife “has a sentence she always repeats: ‘Every single award will make me more intrepid, more resilient and more brave for realising human rights, freedom, civil equality and democracy’.”

Narges Mohammadi’s husband Taghi Rahmani and their son, Ali, in Paris.Credit: AP

Rahmani hadn’t been able to see his wife for 11 years, and their children hadn’t seen their mother for seven, he said.

Their son, Ali Rahmani, said the Nobel Prize was not just for his mother, “it’s for the struggle”.

“This prize is for the entire population, for the whole struggle from the beginning, since the Islamic government came to power,” the teen said.

Female political prisoners in Evin weren’t allowed to use the phone on Thursday and Friday, so Mohammadi had prepared her statement in advance of the Nobel announcement in case she won, said exiled Iranian photographer Reihane Taravati, a family friend who spent 14 days in solitary confinement there before fleeing to France this year.

Mohammadi is the 19th woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the second Iranian woman, after human rights activist Shirin Ebadi won in 2003.

Before being jailed, Mohammadi was vice president of the banned Defenders of Human Rights Centre in Iran, founded by Ebadi.

Prominent Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, right, listens to Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi in Tehran in 2007.Credit: AP

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called Friday’s selection “a tribute to all those women who are fighting for their rights at the risk of their freedom, their health and even their lives”.

It’s the fifth time in its 122-year history that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given to someone in prison or under house arrest. Last year, the top human rights advocate in Belarus, Ales Bialiatski, was among the winners. He remains imprisoned.

Mohammadi is in detention after protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, who was picked up by the morality police for her allegedly loose headscarf. More than 500 people were killed in a security crackdown, while more than 22,000 others were arrested.

But from behind bars, Mohammadi contributed an opinion piece for The New York Times last month. “What the government may not understand is that the more of us they lock up, the stronger we become,” she wrote.

In a first reaction from Tehran, the semi-official Fars news agency dismissed Mohammadi as someone who “persisted in creating tension and unrest and falsely claimed that she was beaten in prison”.

Abuse in Iranian prisons – something Mohammadi has campaigned against both outside and behind bars – has been widely reported by the UN and human rights groups.

In Tehran, people expressed support for Mohammadi and her resilience.

“The prize was her right. She stayed inside the country, in prison and defended people, bravo!” said Mina Gilani, a girl’s high school teacher.

Arezou Mohebi, a 22-year-old chemistry student, called the Nobel Prize win “an award for all Iranian girls and women”, and described Mohammadi “as the bravest I have ever seen”.

Political analyst Ahmad Zeidabadi said the prize might lead to more pressure on Mohammadi.

“The prize will simultaneously bring possibilities and restrictions,” he wrote online. “I hope Narges will not be confined by its restrictions.”

The Nobel Prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish krona each ($1.5 million). Unlike the other prizes that are selected and announced in Stockholm, founder Alfred Nobel decreed the peace prize be decided and awarded in Oslo by the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Other recipients this year were:

• Literature: Norwegian author Jon Fosse
• Chemistry: Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov for work on tiny quantum dots
• Physics: Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier for split-second work on electrons in atoms
• Medicine: Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for mRNA vaccines

The Nobel season ends on Monday with the announcement of the winner of the economics prize, formerly known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

AP