Narges Mohammadi is without doubt one of the ladies spearheading the “Woman, Life, Freedom” rebellion.
Oslo:
Imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi denounced Sunday a “tyrannical and anti-women religious” authorities in Iran, in a speech delivered by her youngsters who accepted the award in her absence.
“The Iranian people will dismantle obstruction and despotism through their persistence,” Mohammadi stated within the speech.
“Have no doubt — this is certain,” she stated.
Mohammadi, who has campaigned in opposition to the obligatory sporting of the hijab and the loss of life penalty in Iran, has been held since 2021 in Tehran’s Evin jail.
Instead, her 17-year-old twins Ali and Kiana, each dwelling in exile in France since 2015, acquired the award on her behalf, studying a speech she managed to smuggle out of her cell.
Watch the very second Narges Mohammadi’s youngsters collected this yr’s Nobel Peace Prize medal and diploma on behalf of their mom who’s at the moment imprisoned. Mohammadi was awarded the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for her work on human rights.
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— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) December 10, 2023
“I am a Middle Eastern woman, and come from a region which, despite its rich civilisation, is now trapped amid war, the fire of terrorism, and extremism,” she stated in a message that was written, “behind the high, cold walls of a prison”.
“I am an Iranian woman, a proud and honourable contributor to civilisation, who is currently under the oppression of a despotic religious government,” she stated.
– Empty chair –
A chair was left symbolically empty on the ceremony, the place a portrait of the laureate was displayed.
Mohammadi is without doubt one of the ladies spearheading the “Woman, Life, Freedom” rebellion, which noticed months-long protests throughout Iran triggered by the loss of life of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
Amini, an Iranian Kurdish lady, died on September 16, 2022, whereas being held by Iran’s non secular police for allegedly breaching the Islamic republic’s gown code for girls.
The motion that sprung up within the wake of Amini’s loss of life seeks the tip of Iran’s imposition of a scarf on all ladies and an finish to the Muslim cleric-led authorities in Tehran.
“The mandatory 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 stated within the speech learn earlier than the Norwegian royal household and international dignitaries.
She stated Iran “is fundamentally alienating itself from its people”, denouncing authorities repression, the shortage of an unbiased judicial system, propaganda and censorship, and corruption.
In distinction to the fanfare in Oslo, Mohammadi could be observing a starvation strike on the similar time, in solidarity with the Baha’i neighborhood, in accordance with her household.
Representatives of Baha’i, Iran’s largest non secular minority, say it’s the goal of focused discrimination.
– In Mandela’s footsteps –
Mohammadi is the fifth laureate within the greater than 120-year historical past of the Nobel Peace Prize to obtain the award whereas detained.
She follows Germany’s Carl von Ossietzky, Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, China’s Liu Xiaobo and Belarus’s 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 in South Africa came to an end,” the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, stated in a speech.
Arrested 13 instances, sentenced 5 instances to a complete of 31 years in jail and 154 lashes, Mohammadi has spent a lot of the previous 20 years out and in of jail.
Her twin youngsters, who haven’t seen their mom for nearly 9 years, do not know if they will ever see her alive once more.
“Personally I’m rather pessimistic,” Kiana Mohammadi instructed reporters on Saturday, whereas her brother Ali stated he remained “very, very optimistic”.
Protests in Iran triggered by Amini’s loss of life have been severely repressed.
The Iran Human Rights group (IHR) says 551 demonstrators, together with dozens of girls and youngsters, have been killed by safety forces, and hundreds have been arrested.
On Saturday, the lawyer for Amini’s household stated her mother and father and brother, who had been as a consequence of obtain the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought on Amini’s behalf at a ceremony on December 13, was being prohibited from leaving Iran.
The laureates of the opposite Nobel prizes, in literature, chemistry, drugs, physics and economics, had been offered their awards by Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf at a separate ceremony in Sweden, earlier than heading to a lavish banquet at Stockholm’s City Hall.
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