(Oslo) The Nobel Peace Prize was crowned on Friday by Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi, currently imprisoned in the Islamic Republic, where bareheaded women fight for their rights despite violent repression.
The 51-year-old activist and journalist is being rewarded “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her struggle to promote human rights and freedom for all,” said the president of the Norwegian Nobel committee, Berit Reiss -Andersen, in Oslo.
Vice-president of the Center for Human Rights Defenders founded by Shirin Ebadi, also a Nobel Prize winner in 2003, Narges Mohammadi has been repeatedly convicted and imprisoned for 25 years for her commitment against compulsory veiling for women and against the death sentence.
When his distinction was announced, the UN requested his release.
“I appeal to Iran: release her, do something worthy and release the Nobel laureate,” said the president of the Nobel committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, to AFP.
Narges Mohammadi is distinguished while Iran was crossed last year by a vast protest movement triggered by the death of a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, Mahsa Amini, after her arrest in Tehran for non-compliance with the strict code Islamic clothing.
A 16-year-old girl, Armita Garawand, is currently in a coma after, according to the Iranian Kurdish rights NGO Hengaw, having been “attacked” by members of the moral police responsible for enforcing the obligation to wear the veil.
“The movement accelerated the process of democracy, freedom and equality”, now “irreversible”, Narges Mohammadi, a woman with long curly black hair, wrote to AFP last month from her cell.
She and three fellow inmates burned their veils in the courtyard of Tehran’s Evin Prison to mark the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death on September 16.
Iran is at 143e place – out of 146 countries – in the World Economic Forum (WEF) ranking on gender equality.
The uprising “Woman, Life, Liberty” – a slogan with which Mme Reiss-Andersen began his announcement, in Farsi then in English, on Friday – there was violent repression: 551 demonstrators, including 68 children and 49 women, were killed by security forces, according to the NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR ), and thousands more arrested.
“No prospect of freedom”
If the protest is now more diffuse, it continues in different forms, posing to the Iranian authorities one of the greatest challenges since the 1979 revolution.
Scenes still unimaginable a year ago, women today go out revealed in public places despite the risks.
In September, the predominantly conservative Iranian Parliament further tightened sanctions targeting women who refuse the hijab.
“This year’s peace prize also recognizes the hundreds of thousands of people who, over the past year, have demonstrated against the theocratic regime’s policies of discrimination and oppression against women,” said Mme Reiss-Andersen, who sees in Mme Mohammadi “the undisputed leader”.
The winner’s family hailed “a historic moment for the fight for freedom in Iran” and the UN called for her release and “that of all human rights defenders imprisoned in Iran”.
The Nobel shows “the strength of women for freedom”, responded Berlin.
Arrested again in 2021, Narges Mohammadi has not seen her children – who live in France with her husband – for eight years.
Considered a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International, she said in her correspondence with the AFP that she had “almost no prospect of freedom”.
Twenty years ago, Shirin Ebadi defied Iranian conservatives by receiving her Nobel Prize in Oslo without wearing a hijab.
If she remains behind bars, Narges Mohammadi, Iran’s second Nobel Prize winner, will not be able to travel to the Norwegian capital to receive her prize – a diploma and a gold medal accompanied by 11 million crowns (nearly 980,000 euros) – December 10.
The Peace Prize has repeatedly rewarded imprisoned activists, including the Belarusian Ales Beliatski last year, represented by his wife at the Nobel ceremony, and the Chinese Liu Xiaobo whose chair remained symbolically empty in 2010.