(DailyDig.com) – Narges Mohammadi, an incarcerated human rights campaigner in Iran, won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize. She became the fifth detainee to win the prize.
Mohammadi has advocated for the abolition of the death sentence, rights for women, and better jail conditions in Iran. She has been imprisoned several times before, and her current stay in Tehran’s Evin jail would, once completed, bring her total time behind bars to nearly 12 years. One of the accusations against her is that she promoted anti-government propaganda.
The Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, praised Mohammadi as a freedom warrior in her statement regarding the Nobel Prize award. She declared the Farsi words for “Woman, Life, Freedom,” a slogan used in rallies against the Iranian regime. After a young lady was killed while in police custody in September 2022, the phrase was officially adopted by protesters.
Reiss-Andersen said that the prize was a nod to the thousands of individuals who have marched in protest against discrimination and gender oppression in Iran. In order to attain the international brotherhood that Alfred Nobel, the prize’s namesake, hoped to inspire, all people must be granted equal rights.
The Deputy Director, Mohammadi, of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, leads an NGO founded and directed by Shirin Ebadi, the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.
She is the first woman to win the 122-year-old award since Filipino Maria Ressa shared the medal with Dmitry Muratov of Russia in 2021 and was the nineteenth woman overall.
On December 10, the Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded in Oslo, Norway. It will be the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896. The prize is awarded with Swedish crowns worth 11 million, or around 1 million U.S. dollars.
According to Reiss-Andersen, this award is primarily a tribute to the efforts of a whole Iranian movement, of which Narges Mohammadi is the undeniable center.
Their ultimate hope is that the Iranian government will free her in time for her to attend the award ceremony in December.
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