OSLO, Norway (AP) — Imprisoned activist Narges Mohammadi gained the Nobel Peace Prize Friday for preventing the oppression of girls in Iran.
“This prize is at the start a recognition of the crucial work of an entire motion in Iran with with its undisputed chief, Nargis Mohammadi,” mentioned Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee who introduced the prize in Oslo. “The affect of the prize isn’t for the Nobel committee to resolve upon. We hope that it’s an encouragement to proceed the work in whichever kind this motion finds to be becoming.”
Authorities arrested Mohammadi in November after she attended a memorial for a sufferer of violent 2019 protests. Reiss-Andersen mentioned Mohammadi has been imprisoned 13 occasions and convicted 5 occasions. In whole, she has been sentenced to 31 years in jail.
She is the nineteenth girl to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the second Iranian girl, after human rights activist Shirin Ebadi gained the award in 2003.
Mohammadi was behind bars for the current nationwide protests over the demise of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died after she she was detained by the nation’s morality police. That sparked one of many most-intense challenges ever to Iran’s theocracy since its 1979 Islamic Revolution. Greater than 500 individuals have been killed in a heavy safety crackdown whereas over 22,000 others have been arrested.
Nevertheless, Mohammadi contributed an opinion piece for The New York Occasions from behind bars.
“What the federal government might not perceive is that the extra of us they lock up, the stronger we turn into,” she wrote.
There was no speedy response from Iranian state tv and different state-controlled media. Some semiofficial information businesses acknowledged Mohammadi’s win in on-line messages, citing international press studies.
Earlier than being jailed, Mohammadi was vp of the banned Defenders of Human Rights Heart in Iran. She has been near Ebadi, who based the middle.
In 2018, Mohammadi, an engineer, was awarded the 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prize.
The Nobel Prizes carry a cash 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 consultants in Norway from a listing of simply over 350 nominations.
Last year’s prize was gained 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 embrace Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, Mikhail Gorbachev, Aung San Suu Kyi and the United Nations.
In contrast to 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 yr’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 gained the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday.
Nobels season ends subsequent week with the announcement of the winner of the economics prize, formally often known as the Financial institution of Sweden Prize in Financial Sciences in Reminiscence of Alfred Nobel.
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