Mohammadi to go on starvation strike ‘in solidarity’ with Iran’s Baha’i non secular minority as her prize is awarded in Norway.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, at the moment jailed in Iran for her activism for ladies’s rights, will start a brand new starvation strike in jail as her prize is awarded in Norway, says her household.
At a information convention on Saturday in Oslo, Mohammadi’s husband Taghi Rahmani, their twin youngsters, Ali and Kiana Rahmani, and her brother who’re representing the veteran rights activist on the awards ceremony on Sunday, stated the brand new strike is to indicate solidarity in direction of the Baha’i non secular minority in Iran.
“She is not here with us today, she is in prison and she will be on a hunger strike in solidarity with a religious minority but we feel her presence here,” her youthful brother, Hamidreza Mohammadi, stated in a quick opening assertion.
Mohammadi, 51, was awarded the Nobel prize in October “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran”. She is nineteenth lady to win the 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1m) prize, and the fifth individual to win it whereas in detention.
“On International Human Rights Day, 10th of December, I will also go on a hunger strike in protest against violations of human rights in Iran and in solidarity with the hunger strike of Baha’i women prisoners in Evin Prison,” stated a put up on Mohammadi’s Instagram account.
Mohammadi is at the moment held in Evin jail in Tehran, the place she went another hunger strike final month to protest limits on medical look after her and different inmates, in addition to the duty for ladies to put on the hijab in Iran, in response to her household.
In a letter smuggled out from jail and revealed on Monday by Swedish public broadcaster SVT, Mohammadi stated she would proceed the strike even when it led to her loss of life.
“Imprisonment, psychological torture, constant solitary confinement, sentence after sentence; that hasn’t and is not going to stop me,” she wrote, in response to SVT.
“I am going to stand up for freedom and equality even if it costs me my life,” she stated, and added that she missed her youngsters probably the most.
In a robust assertion of help for Mohammadi, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, stated the physique was “deeply concerned” concerning the 2023 laureate’s well being.
First arrested 22 years in the past, Mohammadi has spent a lot of the previous 20 years out and in of jail over her campaigning for human rights in Iran. She has most not too long ago been incarcerated since November 2021 and has not seen her youngsters, now primarily based in France, for eight years.
On the information convention in Oslo, Kiana, who final noticed her mom eight years in the past, stated, “When it comes to seeing her again, personally I am very pessimistic.”
“Maybe I’ll see her in 30 or 40 years, but I think I won’t see her again,” she informed a information convention by way of a translator. “But that doesn’t matter because my mother will always live on in my heart and with my family.”
Mohammadi’s Nobel Prize got here within the wake of months-long protests throughout Iran triggered by the September 2022 loss of life in custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, who was arrested for allegedly flouting Iran’s strict costume guidelines for ladies.
Each Ali and Kiana will obtain Mohammadi’s diploma and gold medal at Oslo’s Metropolis Corridor and provides the Nobel Prize lecture on behalf of their mom on Sunday.
