Narges Mohammadi, who has just received the Nobel Peace Prize, dedicated his life to defending human rights in Iran, at the cost of years of imprisonment and a heartbreaking separation from his family.
She fights against the compulsory wearing of the veil or the death penalty, denounces sexual violence in detention, and tirelessly continues her fight, including behind the bars of Evin prison in Tehran, where she was reincarcerated more recently. one year.
The 51-year-old activist “is the most determined person I know,” her husband Taghi Rahmani, who has been a refugee in France since 2012 with their two twins, now aged 17, told AFP.
Arrested multiple times since 1998, Narges Mohammadi has been sentenced to several prison terms and must soon be tried on new charges. For the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) association, she is the victim of “real legal harassment”.
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to this woman is highly symbolic, at a time when the “Woman Life Freedom” movement has been shaking Iran for more than a year. The protest, born after the death of a young Iranian Kurd, Mahsa Amini, who died in detention after her arrest by the moral police for a poorly worn veil, was bloodily repressed. But for Mme Mohammadi, the change is “irreversible”.
“The movement accelerated the process of democracy, freedom and equality,” she recently responded to written questions from AFP, and it “weakened the foundations of despotic religious government.”
“Voices of the voiceless”
Presentiment or chance? Two months before the start of the demonstrations on September 16, 2022, Narges Mohammadi had published a text on his Instagram account, managed by his family, against the obligation to wear the hijab.
“In this authoritarian regime, women’s voices are forbidden, women’s hair is forbidden […] I, Narges Mohammadi […] declares that I will not accept the obligatory hijab,” it read. Two months later, videos showing women burning their hijabs in Iran went viral.
Born in 1972 in Zanjan, in the northwest of Iran, Narges Mohammadi studied physics before becoming an engineer. At the same time, she launched into journalism with reformist newspapers.
In the 2000s, she joined the Center for Human Rights Defenders (of which she is today vice-president), founded by the Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2003. She fights in particular for the abolition of the death penalty.
“Narges had the possibility of leaving the country, but she always refused […] she became the voice of the voiceless. Even in prison, she does not forget her duties and informs about the situation of prisoners,” says Reza Moini, an Iranian human rights activist based in Paris who knows her well.
In a book titled White torture (White torture), she denounces the conditions of detention of the prisoners, particularly their placement in solitary confinement, abuse of which she says she herself was a victim. She is currently detained in the women’s section, with around fifty prisoners, according to her husband Taghi Rahmani.
“Indescribable pain”
“She has three fights in her life: respect for human rights, her feminist commitment, and justice for all the crimes that have been committed,” insists Mr. Rahmani.
Narges Mohammadi was imprisoned between May 2015 and October 2020 for “forming and leading an illegal group”, calling for the abolition of capital punishment.
She has since been again sentenced to lashes and years in prison for “propaganda against the system”, “rebellion”, or even “endangering national security”…
Considered a “prisoner of opinion” by Amnesty International, this elegant woman with curly black hair has barely been able to see her children, Kiana and Ali, grow up, who have not seen their mother since 2015.
“It’s an unbearable and indescribable pain,” she said in September in her responses to AFP.
“In 24 years of marriage, we have had 5 or 6 years of living together! », calculates her husband.
But “she never gave up, we can’t break her. They have tried but so far they have not succeeded, they have only strengthened his resolve,” he says. “Narges is also someone who is very lively, very optimistic,” he emphasizes.