The Nobel Peace Prize goes to Narges Mohammadi, but the chair in Oslo is empty

2023-12-10 15:33:30

Time.news – On the same day the Nobel Peace Prize and a new form of protest with the hunger strike. Narges Mohammadi does not collect the prize in person. AND in prison in Evin prison in Tehran because he has been fighting for human rights for years.

A commitment that has earned her the prestigious recognition that is awarded every year on 10 December, the day on which the anniversary of the approval of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 is celebrated. The place intended for Narges Mohammadi, alongside her children, was left blank.

Mohammadi asked that his two sons collect the award. With them also Mohammadi’s father and husband, the journalist and activist, Taghi Rahmani, and some prominent figures from the world of culture who are critical of the regime such as the cartoonist Marjan Satrapi and the actress Golshifteh Farahani.

Among the activist’s battles is also that against the obligation for women to wear the hijab, and the hunger strike, which begins today, is “in solidarity with the Bahai religious minority”, announced her brother and her husband during a press conference in the Norwegian capital on the eve of the Nobel ceremony.

During the ceremony at Oslo City Hall, I washer 17-year-old twins, Ali and Kiana, exiled in France since 2015, who, dressed all in black, read in French the speech that she managed to transmit from her cell.

“I am a woman from the Middle East, from a region that, although heir to a rich civilization, is currently stuck in the trap of war and prey to the flames of terrorism and extremism”, says Mohammadi in his message written “behind the high and cold walls of a prison”.

“I’m a Iranian woman proud and honored to contribute to this civilization, who today is the victim of oppression by a tyrannical and misogynistic religious regime,” he added, urging the international community to do more for human rights.

In his absence, an armchair remained symbolically empty, surmounted by his portrait. Arrested and convicted several times in recent decades, the 51-year-old activist is one of the main faces of the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement against the Islamic Republic that exploded last year in Iran.

The movement, which saw women take off their headscarves, cut their hair and demonstrate in the streets, was sparked by the death of a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, Mahsa Amini, after her arrest in Tehran for not wearing the headscarf correctly obligatory.

“The compulsory hijab imposed by the government is neither a religious obligation nor a cultural model, but rather a means of control and subjugation of the entire society,” Mohammadi reiterated on Sunday, calling the imposition a “government shame.”

In the speech read before the Norwegian royal family, the activist described an Islamic Republic “essentially alien to its people”denouncing in particular repression, the judicial system, propaganda and censorship, nepotism and corruption.

While she was celebrated with great fanfare in Oslo, the winner had to observe a hunger strike behind bars in solidarity with the Bahai community, the largest religious minority in Iran, victim of discrimination in many sectors of society.

In the history of the Nobel, Mohammadi is the fifth Peace Prize winner to be in detention, after the German Carl von Ossietzky, the Burmese Aung San Suu Kyi, the Chinese Liu Xiaobo and the Belarusian Ales Beliatski. “The struggle of Narges Mohammadi can be compared to that of Albert Lutuli, Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela (all also awarded the Nobel, ed.)”, underlined the president of the Nobel committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen.