Iran’s Narges Mohammadi wins Nobel Peace Prize for her work fighting oppression of women | CBC News

Narges Mohammadi, imprisoned Iranian activist, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Friday.

“The Norwegian Nobel Committee has determined to award the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize to Narges Mohammadi for her battle towards the oppression of ladies in Iran and her battle to advertise human rights and freedom for all,” the committee mentioned in its quotation. Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, introduced the prize.

Mohammadi, 51, is considered one of Iran’s main human rights activists, who has campaigned for girls’s rights and the abolition of the loss of life penalty.

She is at present serving a number of sentences in Tehran’s Evin Jail amounting to about 12 years imprisonment, based on the Entrance Line Defenders rights group, one of many many durations she has been detained behind bars. Expenses embrace spreading propaganda towards the state.

Her most up-to-date arrest got here within the wake of nationwide protests over the the 2022 loss of life of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old who died after she was detained by the nation’s morality police.

“This yr’s peace prize additionally acknowledges the a whole bunch of 1000’s of people that, within the previous yr, have demonstrated towards the theocratic regime’s insurance policies of discrimination and oppression focusing on girls,” mentioned Reiss-Andersen. “Solely by embracing equal rights for all can the world obtain the fraternity between nations that Alfred Nobel sought to advertise.”

Taghi Ramahi, Mohammadi’s husband, advised Reuters by cellphone from their house in Paris that “this Nobel Prize will embolden Narges’s battle for human rights, however extra importantly, that is actually a prize for the lady, life and freedom [movement].”

Tehran calls the protests Western-led subversion.

Mohammadi’s win got here as rights teams say that an Iranian teenage woman was just lately hospitalized in a coma after a confrontation on the Tehran metro for not sporting a hijab.

Iranian authorities deny the stories.

‘A really excessive value’

Mohammadi, an engineer by commerce, started her activism within the Nineteen Nineties. She is the deputy head of the Defenders of Human Rights Heart, a non-governmental group led by Shirin Ebadi, who fled Iran a number of years after being honoured because the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Mohammadi is the nineteenth lady to win the 122-year-old prize and the primary one since Maria Ressa of the Philippines gained the award in 2021 collectively with Russia’s Dmitry Muratov.

Ales Bialiatski, Belarus’s high human rights advocate and one of many winners of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, was sentenced to 10 years in jail earlier this yr.

“Being a freedom fighter comes at a really excessive value … it has value them every thing,” Reiss-Andersen mentioned, referring to Mohammadi and Bialiatski.

WATCH l Shirin Ebadi pleased with Iranian girls in present battle (from Nov. 17, 2022):

Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi reacts to the continued protests

Featured VideoIranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate and human rights activist Shirin Ebadi says the killing of Mahsa Amini was like “a match that lit up a barrel of gunpowder” and “ignited this accumulation of individuals’s outrage”.

The Nobel prizes are introduced to the laureates on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s loss of life.

Reiss-Andersen mentioned it was unclear how that ceremony would proceed, given Mohammadi’s imprisonment.

“If the Iranian authorities make the correct resolution, they are going to launch her in order that she may be current to obtain this honour, which is what we primarily hope for,” she mentioned.

The Workplace of the United Nations Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) mentioned the award highlighted the braveness and willpower of Iranian girls.

“We have seen their braveness and willpower within the face of reprisals, intimidation, violence and detention,” mentioned OHCHR spokesperson Elizabeth Throssell.

“They have been harassed for what they do or do not put on. There are more and more stringent authorized, social and financial measures towards them. This actually is one thing that highlights the braveness and willpower of the ladies of Iran and the way they’re an inspiration to the world.”

Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who in his will dictated that his property needs to be used to fund “prizes to those that, in the course of the previous yr, have conferred the best profit to humankind.” The primary awards got out in 1901.   

The Nobel prize in economics will probably be introduced on Monday.