Who is Iranian women's rights activist Narges Mohammadi, winner of 2023 Nobel Peace Prize?

Iran’s Narges Mohammadi has been awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. The 51-year-old activist and freedom fighter has spent years behind bars while campaigning for the rights of women and democracy.

2023 #NobelPeacePrize laureate Narges Mohammadi’s brave struggle has come with tremendous personal costs. The Iranian regime has arrested her 13 times, convicted her five times, and sentenced her to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes. Mohammadi is still in prison. pic.twitter.com/ooDEZAVX01

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 6, 2023

“This prize is first and foremost a recognition of the very important work of a whole movement in Iran with its undisputed leader, Nargis Mohammadi,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee who announced the prize in Oslo. Reiss-Andersen said the committee hopes the prize “is an encouragement to continue the work in whichever form this movement finds to be fitting.” She also urged Iran to release Mohammadi in time for the prize ceremony on 10 December. But who is Mohammadi, currently incarcerated in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison? What do we know about her? Let’s take a closer look Early years and activism Mohammadi was born on 21 April, 1972, in Iran’s Zanjan. As per Hindustan Times, she studied at the Imam Khomeini International University in Qazvin – the historic tourist city around 150 kilometres from Tehran. Mohammadi, then a young physics student, was already making a name for herself as a women’s rights advocate. After graduating from the university, Mohammadi found work as an engineer. She also penned a column in several reformist newspapers. Mohammadi in 2003 became involved with the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Tehran, an organisation founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi. She was also elected president of the Executive Committee of the National Council of Peace in Iran – a broad coalition against war and for the promotion of human rights. Mohammadi was arrested for the first time in 2011.

For her efforts to assist incarcerated activists and their families, Mohammadi was sentenced to many years in prison.

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In 2013, after being released on bail, Mohammadi took up campaigning against the death penalty. Iran employs the death penalty against its own citizens fairly frequently – more than 860 prisoners have been put to death since January 2022. Mohammadi was again arrested in 2015 and given even more years in jail. Mohammadi then took up a new issue – protesting the use of torture and sexual violence against prisoners particularly women. “They couldn’t put an abaya and turban on half of the population, i.e., men in society,” Mohammadi wrote in a recent letter to CNN. “However, they easily adorned half of Iran’s population with ‘mandatory hijab,’ veil, chador, manteau, and dark-coloured trousers to present the odious face of the despotic religious system to the world.” [caption id=“attachment_13213082” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Taghi Ramahi, husband of Narges Mohammadi, with an undated photo of himself and his wife. Reuters[/caption] “Imagine Iranian women who, for 44 years, have been forced to wear a head covering, long coats, and dark-colored pants in the summer heat, and in some places, black chadors. “Worse than that, they have been under psychological pressure to strictly adhere to compulsory hijab, all to preserve the image of religious Islamic men and ensure the security and purity of women. Now, those same women are experiencing sexual assault and harassment against themselves.” Mohammadi’s most recent incarceration in Evin prison – whose inmates include those with Western ties and political prisoners – began when she was detained in 2021 after she attended a memorial for a person killed in nationwide protests sparked by an increase in gasoline prices. As per CNN, Mohammadi stands accused of propaganda against the state and activities detrimental to national security. In all, Mohammadi has been arrested on 13 occasions. Convicted five times, she has been given over three decades in prison and 154 lashes. Behind bars for the recent protests over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody – which sparked one of the most intense challenges ever to Iran’s theocracy in which more than 500 people were killed in a heavy security crackdown while over 22,000 others were arrested – Mohammadi wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times. “What the government may not understand is that the more of us they lock up, the stronger we become,” she wrote.

Mohammadi has also taken up a leadership role in prison.

As per CNN, Mohammadi, in an audio recording from inside Evin is heard leading her prisoners in chants of “woman, life, freedom” – the motto adopted by those protesting the death of Amini. Mohammadi published a book entitled White Torture: Interviews with Iranian Women Prisoners and also made a documentary on solitary confinement – a practice she has vowed to abolish. ‘Victory is near’ In a statement to The New York Times, Mohammadi said the “global support and recognition of my human rights advocacy makes me more resolved, more responsible, more passionate and more hopeful.” “I also hope this recognition makes Iranians protesting for change stronger and more organized,” she added. “Victory is near.” “This Nobel Prize will embolden Narges’ fight for human rights, but more importantly, this is in fact a prize for the ‘women, life and freedom’ movement,” Mohammadi’s husband Taghi Rahmani told Reuters at his home in Paris. Mohmmadi’s twin children Kiana and Ali live with her husband. For Mohammadi, the cost of her activism has also been immense – having missed much of the childhood of her twin children. As well as not seeing them for eight years, restrictions placed by the prison on her telephone calls means she has not even heard their voices for more than a year and a half. “My most incurable and indescribable suffering is the longing to be with my children from whose lives I departed when they were eight.” “The price of the struggle is not only torture and prison, it is a heart that breaks with every regret and a pain that strikes to the marrow of your bones.” But she added: “I believe that as long as democracy, equality and freedom have not been achieved, we must continue to fight and sacrifice.” Mohammadi’s brother said the prize was overwhelming and he hoped it would make Iranian campaigners safer. “The situation there is very dangerous, activists there can lose their lives,” Hamidreza Mohammed told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK. 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 can be tightly controlled.

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Laws require all women to at least wear a headscarf, or hijab, to cover their hair as a sign of piety. Iran and neighboring Afghanistan remain the only countries that mandate it. Mohammadi is the 19th woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the second Iranian woman, after human rights activist Shirin Ebadi won the award in 2003. It’s the fifth time in the 122-year history of the awards that the peace prize has been given to someone who is in prison or under house arrest. Last year, the top human rights advocate in Belarus, Ales Bialiatski, was among the winners. He remains imprisoned. There was no immediate reaction from Iranian state television and other state-controlled media. Some semiofficial news agencies acknowledged Mohammadi’s win in online messages, citing foreign press reports. In 2018, Mohammadi, an engineer, was awarded the Andrei Sakharov Prize. Earlier this year, PEN America, which advocates for freedom of speech, gave Mohammadi its PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award. The organization applauded her win. The choice “is a tribute to her courage and that of countless women and girls who have poured out into the streets of Iran and faced down one of the world’s most brutal and stubborn regimes, risking their lives to demand their rights,” PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel said in a statement. In 2011, she was awarded the Per Anger Prize by the Swedish government for her human rights work. The Nobel Prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1 million). Winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma at the award ceremonies in December. In addition to Bialiatski, human rights activists from Ukraine and Russia also shared last year’s prize, in what was seen as a strong rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin after his invasion of Ukraine. Other previous winners include Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, Mikhail Gorbachev, Aung San Suu Kyi and the United Nations. Unlike the other Nobel prizes that are selected and announced in Stockholm, founder Alfred Nobel decreed that the peace prize be decided and awarded in Oslo by the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee. The independent panel is appointed by the Norwegian parliament. The peace prize was the fifth of this year’s prizes to be announced. A day earlier, the Nobel committee awarded Norwegian writer Jon Fosse the prize for literature. On Wednesday, the chemistry prize went to U.S.-based scientists who study quantum dots — whose applications include electronics and medical imaging. The physics prize went Tuesday to three scientists who gave us the first glimpse into the superfast world of spinning electrons. A pair of scientists whose work enabled mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday. Nobel season ends next week with the announcement of the winner of the economics prize, formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. With inputs from agencies