Peace prize winner Narges Mohammadi smuggles message out of cell

In the message, read in French by her daughter, Kiana Rahmani, and posted on the official Nobel website, the 51-year-old activist and journalist expressed her “sincere gratitude” to the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Mohammadi – who was honored in early October “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran” – again criticized the obligation for women in Iran to wear a headscarf, and denounced the Iranian authorities.

“The compulsory hijab is a means of control and repression imposed on society and on which the continuation and survival of this authoritarian religious regime depends,” she declared through her 17-year-old daughter, who is taking refuge with her has searched in France. family.

She condemned “a regime that has institutionalized deprivation and poverty in society for forty-five years”, adding that it was “built on lies, deceit, cunning and intimidation”.

Narges Mohammadi was arrested 13 times, sentenced five times to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes, and imprisoned again as of 2021. She is one of the women leading the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ uprising in Iran.

– An ‘unstoppable process’ –

The movement, in which women remove their headdresses, cut their hair and demonstrate in the streets, was sparked by the death of a young 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, last year after she was arrested in Tehran for failing to comply with the strict Islamic dress code.

On Saturday, Armita Garawand, a 17-year-old ethnic Kurd, died a week after being declared “brain dead” after being hospitalized since October 1 after falling unconscious on the subway.

Rights groups have said the teenager was seriously injured in an alleged attack by female members of Iran’s morality police. Authorities dispute this story and say she suddenly fell ill.

“We, the people of Iran, demand democracy, freedom, human rights and equality, and the Islamic Republic is the main obstacle on the way to realizing these national demands,” Mohammadi said in her message.

“We… struggle with the transition from this religious authoritarian regime through solidarity and by using the power of a non-violent and unstoppable process to revive the honor and pride of Iran and human dignity and prestige for its people to breathe in,” she continued with the message from Evin prison.

“Victory is not easy, but it is certain,” she concluded.

How the message was smuggled out has not been disclosed.

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