Narges Mohammadi is without doubt one of the ladies spearheading the “Girl, Life, Freedom” rebellion.
Oslo:
Imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi denounced Sunday a “tyrannical and anti-women non secular” authorities in Iran, in a speech delivered by her kids who accepted the award in her absence.
“The Iranian individuals will dismantle obstruction and despotism by their persistence,” Mohammadi stated within the speech.
“Have little doubt — that is sure,” she stated.
Mohammadi, who has campaigned in opposition to the obligatory carrying of the hijab and the loss of life penalty in Iran, has been held since 2021 in Tehran’s Evin jail.
As an alternative, her 17-year-old twins Ali and Kiana, each dwelling in exile in France since 2015, acquired the award on her behalf, studying a speech she managed to smuggle out of her cell.
Watch the very second Narges Mohammadi’s kids collected this yr’s Nobel Peace Prize medal and diploma on behalf of their mom who’s presently imprisoned. Mohammadi was awarded the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for her work on human rights.
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— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) December 10, 2023
“I’m a Center Japanese girl, and are available from a area which, regardless of its wealthy civilisation, is now trapped amid struggle, the hearth of terrorism, and extremism,” she stated in a message that was written, “behind the excessive, chilly partitions of a jail”.
“I’m an Iranian girl, a proud and honourable contributor to civilisation, who’s presently underneath the oppression of a despotic non secular authorities,” she stated.
– Empty chair –
A chair was left symbolically empty on the ceremony, the place a portrait of the laureate was displayed.
Mohammadi is without doubt one of the ladies spearheading the “Girl, Life, Freedom” rebellion, which noticed months-long protests throughout Iran triggered by the loss of life of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
Amini, an Iranian Kurdish girl, died on September 16, 2022, whereas being held by Iran’s non secular police for allegedly breaching the Islamic republic’s gown code for girls.
The motion that sprung up within the wake of Amini’s loss of life seeks the tip of Iran’s imposition of a headband on all ladies and an finish to the Muslim cleric-led authorities in Tehran.
“The necessary hijab imposed by the federal government is neither a non secular obligation nor a cultural custom, however quite a way of sustaining authority and submission all through society,” Mohammadi stated within the speech learn earlier than the Norwegian royal household and international dignitaries.
She stated Iran “is essentially alienating itself from its individuals”, denouncing authorities repression, the shortage of an unbiased judicial system, propaganda and censorship, and corruption.
In distinction to the fanfare in Oslo, Mohammadi can be observing a starvation strike on the identical time, in solidarity with the Baha’i neighborhood, based on her household.
Representatives of Baha’i, Iran’s largest non secular minority, say it’s the goal of focused discrimination.
– In Mandela’s footsteps –
Mohammadi is the fifth laureate within the greater than 120-year historical past of the Nobel Peace Prize to obtain the award whereas detained.
She follows Germany’s Carl von Ossietzky, Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, China’s Liu Xiaobo and Belarus’s Ales Beliatski.
“Narges Mohammadi’s battle can be corresponding to that of Albert Lutuli, Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, which occurred over a interval of greater than 30 years earlier than the apartheid system in South Africa got here to an finish,” the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, stated in a speech.
Arrested 13 instances, sentenced 5 instances to a complete of 31 years in jail and 154 lashes, Mohammadi has spent a lot of the previous 20 years out and in of jail.
Her twin kids, who haven’t seen their mom for nearly 9 years, do not know if they will ever see her alive once more.
“Personally I am quite pessimistic,” Kiana Mohammadi advised reporters on Saturday, whereas her brother Ali stated he remained “very, very optimistic”.
Protests in Iran triggered by Amini’s loss of life have been severely repressed.
The Iran Human Rights group (IHR) says 551 demonstrators, together with dozens of ladies and youngsters, have been killed by safety forces, and 1000’s have been arrested.
On Saturday, the lawyer for Amini’s household stated her dad and mom and brother, who had been as a consequence of obtain the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought on Amini’s behalf at a ceremony on December 13, was being prohibited from leaving Iran.
The laureates of the opposite Nobel prizes, in literature, chemistry, medication, physics and economics, had been introduced their awards by Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf at a separate ceremony in Sweden, earlier than heading to a lavish banquet at Stockholm’s Metropolis Corridor.
(Aside from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)