Narges Mohammadi, Nobel Peace Prize 2023: the perpetual fighter for women's rights in Iran

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize to Narges Mohammadi “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all”. She is an Iranian activist who works as vice president of the Center for Human Rights Defenders, directed by another Nobel Peace Prize winner, Shirin Ebadi.

“This brave woman deserves this award more than me,” Ebadi said of Mohammadi when the former won the Felix Ermacora human rights award.. But there has been no shortage of awards.

In 2009, Mohammadi was awarded the Alexander Langer; in 2011, the Per Anger, human rights award from the Swedish Government; in 2016, the Weimar Human Rights Award; and in 2018, the Andrei Sakharov Prize from the American Physical Society. This woman, who has spent half her life in prison for fighting for the dignity of women in Iran, now receives the Nobel Peace Prize.

From journalist to activist

Narges Mohammadi was born in Zanjan (Iran) on April 21, 1972. Already during her life as a student at the Imam Khomeini International University she began writing articles on women's rights.. He participated in the meetings of the “Illuminating Student Group ” and after one of them he suffered his first arrest; the first of many. He spent a year in prison. He also did climbing, but due to his political activity, the implacable Iranian regime prohibited him from practicing it.

“This brave woman deserves this award more than me,” said Ebadi (Nobel 2003) of Mohammadi

Already graduated in physics, she became an engineer. But he kept writing. He worked as a journalist in several reformist newspapers.. The fruit of that work was his book of political essays 'The reforms, the Strategy and the Tactics'.

In 1999, he married Taghi Rahmani, a colleague in Iran's reform struggle.. They have twin children, Ali and Kiana.

In and out of jail

Mohammadi has been in and out of prison unjustly for years. He has been working at the Center for Human Rights Defenders of Iran for twenty years, which he joined in 2003.. It was that year when the president of this organization, Shirin Ebadi, won the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 2010, she was summoned before the Islamic Revolutionary Court for belonging to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).. Mohammadi was released on bail and arrested days later. Imprisoned, her health suffered and she developed an illness similar to epilepsy.. After a month, she was discharged and allowed to be treated at a hospital.

The sentence was another sad example of the Iranian authorities' attempts to silence brave human rights defenders.”

In July 2011, she was tried again and found guilty of “acting against national security, membership of the DRC and propaganda against the regime”. Mohammadi was sentenced to 11 years in prison. The sentence was confirmed a year later, but reduced to six years. The British Foreign Office called it “another sad example of the Iranian authorities' attempts to silence brave human rights defenders.”

International petition for freedom

His case did not go unnoticed. Amnesty International designated her a prisoner of conscience and called for her immediate release.. “What have you done during all these years to deserve such sentences? Ask for justice, demand truth, accompany the families of victims of police violence, cry out against the death penalty. In short, defend human rights,” this NGO still repeats today.

Reporters Without Borders issued an appeal on Mohammadi's behalf on the ninth anniversary of the death of photographer Zahra Kazemi in Evin prison, stating that Mohammadi was a prisoner whose life was “in special danger”.

What have you done… ? Ask for justice, demand truth, accompany the families of victims of police violence, cry out against the death penalty. In short, defend human rights”

In July 2012, an international group of lawmakers called for his release.. On the last day of that month of July, Mohammadi was released. That same year, his partner moved to France after serving a fourteen-year prison sentence.

Mohammadi continued in Iran fighting for human rights. In March 2014 he met with the then High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton.

“These people have been sentenced to death after being held in solitary confinement and subjected to horrible psychological and mental torture.”

She was arrested again in May 2015.. The Revolutionary Court sentenced Mohammadi to ten years in prison on the charge of “founding an illegal group” (they were referring to the step-by-step campaign to stop the death penalty), five years for “assembly and collusion against national security ” and one year for “propaganda against the system” for his interviews with international media and his meeting with Ashton.

More than 10 years in prison and 154 lashes

In January 2019, Mohammadi went on a hunger strike alongside detained British-Iranian national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, in Evin Prison, Tehran, to protest the denial of access to medical care.. On October 8, 2020, she was released, but remained sentenced to 10 years and eight months in prison and 154 lashes.

“Defendants are forced to make false and lying confessions that are used as key evidence to hand down convictions.”

On February 27, 2021, she published a video on social media in which she described the sexual abuse and mistreatment to which she and other women were subjected in prison.. He referred to all of this in more detail in the Annual Human Rights Report on the Death Penalty in Iran that he wrote in March of that year.

“These people have been sentenced to death after being held in solitary confinement and subjected to horrible psychological and mental torture, so I do not consider the judicial process to be fair or equitable; I see that the accused are kept in solitary confinement and They are forced to make false and lying confessions that are used as key evidence to hand down these sentences,” Mohammadi's text described.

A five-minute trial without a lawyer

She was sentenced again in May 2021. On this occasion, two and a half years in prison, 80 lashes and two different fines for charges such as “spreading propaganda against the system”. “The trial was unfair, it lasted five minutes and Narges did not have access to a lawyer,” says Amnesty International.

Her work as a notary of the brutality of the Iranian regime continued with a report she did for the BBC in December 2022.. She recounted the protests sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini and the subsequent sexual and physical abuse suffered by the detained women.

In January this year, Mohammadi submitted a report from prison detailing the situation of women in Evin prison, including a list of 58 prisoners and the interrogation process and torture to which they have been subjected.