Mohammadi has campaigned for women’s rights and abolition of death penalty
Oslo: Narges Mohammadi, a jailed Iranian women’s rights advocate, has won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, Occt 6, a Reuters report in The Tribune Chandigarh, says.
“The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award 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,” the committee said in its citation.
Narges Mohammadi, was chosen by a panel of experts in Norway from a list of just over 350 nominations.
“This prize is first and foremost a recognition of the very important work of a whole movement in Iran with its undisputed leader, Narges Mohammadi,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee who announced the prize in Oslo.
One of Iran’s leading human rights activists, Mohammadi has campaigned for women’s rights and the abolition of the death penalty.
She is currently serving multiple sentences in Tehran’s Evin Prison amounting to about 12 years imprisonment, according to the Front Line Defenders rights organisation, one of the many periods she has been detained behind bars. Charges include spreading propaganda against the state.
Mohammadi’s most recent incarceration began when she was detained in 2021 after she attended a memorial for a person killed in nationwide 2019 protests sparked by an increase in gasoline prices.
Mohammadi was behind bars for the recent protests over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody. That sparked one of the most intense challenges ever to Iran’s theocracy. More than 500 people were killed in a heavy security crackdown while over 22,000 others were arrested.
Mohammadi had been imprisoned 13 times and convicted five times. In total, she has been sentenced to 31 years in prison. She is the 19th woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the second Iranian woman, after her colleague human rights activist Shirin Ebadi won the award in 2003.
She is the deputy head of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, a non-governmental organisation led by Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Mohammadi is the 19th woman to win the 122-year-old prize and the first one since Maria Ressa of the Philippines won the award in 2021 jointly with Russia’s Dmitry Muratov.
The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 11 million Swedish crowns, or around $1 million, will be presented in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.
Nobel Peace Prize awarded to
The peace prize is the fifth of this year’s prizes to be announced. A day earlier, the Nobel committee awarded Norwegian writer Jon Fosse the prize for literature. On Wednesday, the chemistry prize went to U.S. scientists Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov.
The physics prize went Tuesday to French-Swedish physicist Anne L’Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz. Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday.
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