Narges Mohammadi wins the Nobel Peace Prize for fighting the oppression of women in Iran

OSLO, Norway (AP) — Imprisoned activist Narges Mohammadi, who has campaigned for girls’s rights, democracy and in opposition to the demise penalty in Iran for years, received the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

Mohammadi, 51, has completed her work regardless of going through quite a few arrests and spending years behind bars for her activism.

“This prize is in the beginning a recognition of the essential work of a complete motion in Iran with with its undisputed chief, Nargis Mohammadi,” stated Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee who introduced the prize in Oslo. “The impression of the prize will not be for the Nobel committee to determine upon. We hope that it’s an encouragement to proceed the work in whichever type this motion finds to be becoming.”

Mohammadi’s most up-to-date incarceration started when she was detained in 2021 after she attended a memorial for an individual killed in nationwide 2019 protests sparked by a rise in gasoline costs. She’s been held at Tehran’s infamous Evin Jail, whose inmates embody these with Western ties and political prisoners.

Reiss-Andersen stated Mohammadi has been imprisoned 13 instances and convicted 5 instances. In complete, she has been sentenced to 31 years in jail.

She is the nineteenth lady to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the second Iranian lady, after human rights activist Shirin Ebadi received the award in 2003.

Mohammadi was behind bars for the current protests over the demise of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody. That sparked one of the crucial intense challenges ever to Iran’s theocracy. Greater than 500 individuals have been killed in a heavy safety crackdown whereas over 22,000 others have been arrested.

From behind bars, Mohammadi contributed an opinion piece for The New York Occasions.

“What the federal government could not perceive is that the extra of us they lock up, the stronger we develop into,” she wrote.

There was no fast response from Iranian state tv and different state-controlled media. Some semiofficial information businesses acknowledged Mohammadi’s win in on-line messages, citing overseas press studies.

Earlier than being jailed, Mohammadi was vp of the banned Defenders of Human Rights Middle in Iran. She has been near Ebadi, who based the middle.

In 2018, Mohammadi, an engineer, was awarded the 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prize.

PEN America, which advocates for freedom of speech and earlier this 12 months gave Mohammadi its PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award, applauded the win.

The selection “is a tribute to her braveness and that of numerous girls and ladies who’ve poured out into the streets of Iran and confronted down one of many world’s most brutal and cussed regimes, risking their lives to demand their rights,” PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel stated in an announcement.

The Nobel Prizes carry a money award of 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1 million). Winners additionally obtain an 18-carat gold medal and diploma on the award ceremonies in December.

The winner of the celebrated Nobel Peace Prize is chosen by a panel of specialists in Norway from an inventory of simply over 350 nominations.

Final 12 months’s prize was received by human rights activists from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, in what was seen as a robust rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart and ally.

Different earlier winners embody Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, Mikhail Gorbachev, Aung San Suu Kyi and the United Nations.

Not like the opposite Nobel prizes which are chosen and introduced in Stockholm, founder Alfred Nobel decreed that the peace prize be determined and awarded in Oslo by the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee. The unbiased panel is appointed by the Norwegian parliament.

The peace prize is the fifth of this 12 months’s prizes to be introduced. A day earlier, the Nobel committee awarded Norwegian author Jon Fosse the prize for literature. On Wednesday, the chemistry prize went to U.S. scientists Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov.

The physics prize went Tuesday to French-Swedish physicist Anne L’Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz. Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman received the Nobel Prize in medication on Monday.

Nobels season ends subsequent week with the announcement of the winner of the economics prize, formally generally known as the Financial institution of Sweden Prize in Financial Sciences in Reminiscence of Alfred Nobel.

___

This story has been up to date to appropriate that Mohammadi was most not too long ago detained in November 2021, not 2022.

___

Comply with all AP tales in regards to the Nobel Prizes at https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes