Oslo/Frankfurt (Reuters) – This year’s Nobel Peace Prize goes to the imprisoned Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi.
She will be honored “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her commitment to human rights and freedom for all,” as the Nobel Committee announced on Friday in Oslo. This would also honor the thousands of people who took to the streets in Iran against discrimination against women, at enormous personal risk. Mohammadi’s courageous fight also involved personal sacrifices. In total, the regime arrested her thirteen times, convicted her five times and sentenced her to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes. She is still in custody.
Last year there were months of nationwide protests in Iran after the Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini died in police custody. The moral police had accused her of not following the dress code. The protests were brutally suppressed. In the meantime, dress laws for women have been further tightened. According to a human rights group, 16-year-old Armita Geravand has been in a coma in a hospital since Sunday after an incident with security guards on the subway. The Kurdish human rights group Hengaw said she was also accused of violating the rules on veiling. The authorities rejected a connection.
Mohammadi is the 19th woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. With the award, she now ranks alongside Martin Luther King (1964), Mother Teresa (1979) and Nelson Mandela (1993). Organizations such as Doctors Without Borders (1999) and the European Union (2012) have also received awards. Last year, the award went to the Belarusian dissident Ales Bialiazki as well as the Russian human rights organization Memorial and the Ukrainian “Center for Civil Liberties” for their “documentation of war crimes, human rights violations and abuse of power.”
The prize, worth eleven million Swedish crowns (around 950,000 euros), will be awarded in Oslo on December 10th – the anniversary of the death of the founder Alfred Nobel. The five members of the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee, who are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament, decide who the prize, which has been awarded since 1901, goes to.
(Report by Philipp Krach; edited by Sabine Wollrab. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at [email protected] (for politics and the economy) or [email protected] (for companies and markets).)