Imprisoned Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi has won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize. On October 6th 2023, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that Mohammadi, a 51-year-old activist from Zanjān, Iran, won the renowned prize, noting the “tremendous personal cost” inflicted on her as she serves an ongoing prison sentence. Campaigning against the death penalty, for women’s rights and for Iranian prison reform, Mohammadi has been an outspoken critic of the Iranian regime, having been an activist since her university days.
Mohammadi, who has a background in Physics and Engineering, has been incarcerated for 13 years, arrested 13 times since 1998, sentenced to a total of 31 years imprisonment and has received 154 lashes for her outspoken protests against the state. She is currently serving numerous concurrent sentences, having most recently been incarcerated in 2021 for writing the forward for the Iran Human Rights Annual Report on the death penalty. The reason for this imprisonment - “spreading propaganda against the system”.
Iran took a more totalitarian and authoritarian turn after the election of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005. Stepping up enforcement of modest dress and chastising behaviour under the Guidance Patrol Institution, the Arab country, north of the Persian Gulf, increasingly suppressed those who held progressive and centrist ideologies, particularly in the weeks and months leading up to the 2009 election, where Mohammadi was subsequently arrested and had her passport revoked for her participation in the newly banned Defenders of Human Right Centre. Unable to leave the country, Mohammadi was ultimately arrested and charged many times in the years that followed; she was continuously imprisoned between 2016 and 2020. She was later imprisoned once again in 2021 for attending the protest for Ebrahim Ketabdar, a fellow activist killed in 2019 during a protest against increased fuel prices in the country.
Mohammadi’s success in this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is not the first time the activist has been credited for her long standing hardship, work and logrolling, having been nominated in two years previous in 2021. However, this nomination was used against her in a conviction in January of 2022.
Incarceration did not dim her spirit, having been hailed for leading educational workshops and even dance sessions during her time behind bars. Later, talking to the French news agency, Agence-France Presse, she described the female wing of Evin - the notoriously harsh prison in which she was jailed - as “the most active, resistant and joyful political prisons in Iran”, referring to the optimism and encouragement the other women praised her for. Not only this, she also bravely discussed the harsh and inhumane torture she witnessed and was subject to.
After highlighting the lack of transparency and critiquing the government in regards to the death of the young Iranian woman Jina Masha Amini- who died while in custody for “improper attire”- Narges Mahhamadi was announced to be the recipient of the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for her ongoing fight promoting women’s and human rights as well as freedom for all in the Arab country.