In the calm city of Stockholm, Sweden a prestigious award ceremony takes place annually, this ceremony being the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony. This ceremony is said by Alfred Nobel himself to award a prize in six different categories (physics, chemistry, economics, literature, physiology or medicine, and peace) to “those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.” While all the winners of this prize are well deserving, there was one winner who really stuck out to me, this being the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Narges Mohammadi.
The Peace Prize is supposed to be awarded to someone, according to Alfred Nobel, of creating “fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”. While each winner of this prize is most likely to be a social advocate of some kind, Narges Mohammadi stands out amongst the list of past winners, but unfortunately not just because of her great life accomplishments. Currently, this 51 year old Iranian female rights activist is serving a 31 year prison sentence in Tehran’s Evin Prison. She has been in and out of jail since 2010, she has been arrested 13 times, convicted five times, and is serving out a sentence according to the morality police, for “spreading propaganda”. She is not allowed to see her husband, political activist Taghi Rahmani, who has been in exile in Paris with their two children. They have not seen one another for years.
Narges Mohammadi has been awarded this prize because of her fight against the oppression of the women in Iran. She has always been outspoken but recently has been a pioneer in recent women’s marches and protests because of recent uproar over the death of Mahsa Amini, a woman who was beaten to death by morality police because she wasn’t wearing headscarf right. Mohammadi is also an advocate for the abolition of the death penalty in Iran, which is currently ranked as one of the highest countries in terms of execution rates.
Mohammadi has received the world’s most prestigious prize that is awarded to activists and freedom fighters, but for a few days she was unaware because she’s in prison, let that sink in. As the fight for basic human rights for women goes on in Iran, remember the name Narges Mohammadi. Remember the words she recently said while in prison, “I will continue to fight against the relentless discrimination, tyranny and gender-based oppression by the oppressive religious government until the liberation of all women.”
