2023-10-06 20:31:29
It is questionable whether Narges Mohammadi will be able to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in person in December. Because for that she would first have to be released from prison.
In the Evin prison in Tehran, notorious for the violence of its guards, the 51-year-old human rights activist is serving a ten-year prison sentence for “spreading propaganda against the state”. It is not her first stay in prison: a dozen more have followed since her first arrest in 1998. She has already been convicted several times, with a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes. Further proceedings are ongoing.
That hasn’t broken her: Mohammadi reports regularly from prison, speaks in interviews about the rape and abuse of female inmates, and lectures her fellow prisoners about their rights.
She pays a high price
Born in 1972 in the city of Zanjan, she experienced the Islamic Revolution at the age of nine. An uncle and two cousins are arrested because they are politically active. Mohammadi’s mother visits her regularly in prison. One day the news anchor reads out the name of one of the cousins on television. He had been executed. As she once told the New York Times, her mother is said to have warned Mohammadi against becoming politically active. The price of taking on the government in a country like Iran is simply too high.
But she doesn’t let that stop her. Mohammadi moves to Qazvin and studies physics there. At the university she founded a hiking group for women and a club for civic engagement. This is also how she met her husband. Taghi Rahmani gives secret lectures on civil society. In 1999 they both married and had twins.
However, the family is rarely together. One of the two is usually in prison. Rahmani had already spent her first wedding anniversary in solitary confinement. The couple moved to Tehran, where Mohammadi became involved in organizations fighting for women’s and minority rights. She also advocates for prisoners sentenced to death. She earns money by writing newspaper articles about women’s rights and as an engineer. In 2008, she was fired from her company after pressure from the government. Two years later, she was arrested and convicted because of her membership in the Defenders of Human Rights Center.
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Her family, who now live in exile in France, have not seen Mohammadi for years. The years in prison have taken a toll on her health; she has neurological damage. In 2020 she also became ill with Corona. But her voice has not fallen silent.
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