The 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner, imprisoned Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi, announced on Friday that she had ended her hunger strike after being transferred to hospital without covering her head, according to a message sent by her family.
“I was transferred from prison to hospital on Wednesday without wearing the obligatory veil,” writes Mme Mohammadi in the English version of a message on Instagram sent to AFP by his relatives.
The fifty-year-old, who has been fighting for more than twenty years against the death penalty and against the compulsory veil imposed on women by the Islamic Republic, went on hunger strike on November 6, refusing to wear the headscarf for her transfer to the hospital.
She suffers from heart problems and required urgent hospitalization. “After being hospitalized without having to cover myself and returning to prison, I ended my hunger strike,” she adds.
Friends and relatives who were waiting for him at the hospital entrance were briefly arrested and questioned, their cameras confiscated.
“The government feared that I would be seen without a veil,” according to Mme Mohammadi, who adds: “Until the obligation of the hijab is abolished, I will continue to walk uncovered, and you will tremble at the sight of women without a veil.”
Arrested and sentenced many times for decades, in detention in Evin prison in Tehran since 2021, Narges Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Prize in October for “her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight for the promotion human rights and freedom for all.
She is one of the main faces of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising in Iran.
The movement, which saw women remove the veil, cut their hair and demonstrate in the streets, was sparked by the death last year of a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, Mahsa Amini, after her arrest in Tehran for non-compliance with the strict Islamic dress code. The protest was severely repressed.