Jailed activist Narges Mohammadi, who has campaigned for years for women’s rights, democracy and against the death penalty in Iran, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.
Mohammadi, 51, has done his job despite facing numerous arrests and spending years behind bars for his activism.
“This prize is above all a recognition of the very important work of an entire movement in Iran with its undisputed leader, Nargis Mohammadi,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, president of the Norwegian Nobel Committee who announced the prize in Oslo.
“The impact of the prize is not a decision of the Nobel committee. We hope it will be an encouragement to continue the work in whatever form this movement sees fit.”
Mohammadi’s most recent incarceration began when she was detained in 2021 after attending a memorial service for someone killed in the 2019 nationwide protests sparked by rising gasoline prices.
She has been held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, whose inmates include people with Western ties and political prisoners.
Iranian human rights activist and vice president of the Human Rights Defenders Center (DHRC) Narges Mohammadi.via REUTERS
Reiss-Andersen said Mohammadi has been jailed 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 human rights activist Shirin Ebadi won the prize in 2003.
Mohammadi was behind bars for recent protests over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody. That unleashed one of the most intense challenges ever faced by the Iranian theocracy. More than 500 people were killed in a heavy security crackdown and more than 22,000 were arrested.
Mohammadi at her home in Tehran, Iran, on September 4, 2023, following her release from prison after being detained for “propagating” against the nation’s Islamic system. AFP FILES/AFP via Getty Images
From behind bars, Mohammadi contributed an op-ed to The New York Times.
“What the government may not understand is that the more they lock us up, the stronger we become,” he wrote.
There was no immediate reaction from Iranian state television and other state-controlled media. Some semi-official news agencies acknowledged Mohammadi’s victory in online messages, citing foreign press reports.
Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize Committee Berit Reiss-Andersen speaks during the announcement of the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureates at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo on October 6, 2023.NTB/AFP via Getty Images
Before being imprisoned, Mohammadi was vice president of the banned Center for Human Rights Defenders in Iran. She has been close to Ebadi, who founded the center.
In 2018, Mohammadi, an engineer, was awarded the 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prize.
PEN America, which advocates for freedom of expression and earlier this year awarded Mohammadi its PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award, applauded the victory.
Mohammadi listens to a question during a news conference on the Assessment of the Human Rights Situation in Iran, at the UN headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 9, 2008.AP
The election “is a tribute to her courage and that of countless women and girls who have taken to the streets of Iran and stood up to one of the most brutal and stubborn regimes in the world, risking their lives to demand their rights,” she said. the executive director of PEN America. Suzanne Nossel said in a statement.
The Nobel Prizes are endowed with 11 million Swedish crowns (about 1 million dollars). Winners also receive an 18-karat gold medal and a diploma at the awards ceremony in December.
The winner of the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize is chosen by a panel of experts in Norway from a list of just over 350 nominations.
A view of a bust of Alfred Nobel outside the Norwegian Nobel Institute, where the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is announced, in Oslo, Norway, October 6, 2023.REUTERS
Last year’s prize was won by human rights activists from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, in what was seen as a sharp rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart and ally.
Other past winners include Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, Mikhail Gorbachev, Aung San Suu Kyi and the United Nations.
Unlike other Nobel Prizes that are selected and announced in Stockholm, founder Alfred Nobel decreed that the peace prize would be decided and awarded in Oslo by the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee.
Mohammadi’s most recent incarceration began when she was detained in 2021 after attending a memorial service for someone killed in the 2019 nationwide protests sparked by rising gasoline prices. REUTERS
The independent panel is appointed by the Norwegian parliament.
The peace prize is the fifth of this year’s awards to be announced. A day earlier, the Nobel committee awarded the literature prize to Norwegian writer Jon Fosse.
On Wednesday, the chemistry prize went to American scientists Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov.
The physics prize was awarded on Tuesday to French-Swedish physicist Anne L’Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian Ferenc Krausz. Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in Medicine on Monday.
The Nobel season ends next week with the announcement of the winner of the economics prize, formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn