Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi, 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner, has started a hunger strike in prison to protest the lack of medical care for prisoners and the obligation to wear the veil for women, announced Monday, November 6 his family.
“Narges Mohammadi informed her family that she had started a hunger strike several hours ago. We are concerned for her health,” her relatives said in a statement.
Narges Mohammadi, 51, has been detained in Tehran’s Evin prison since 2021. She was arrested 13 times, and sentenced five times to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes. On Thursday, her family had already announced that the activist, whose health condition is fragile, was being refused transfer to hospital by the prison authorities because she did not want to cover her head. According to an electrocardiogram carried out by a doctor in prison, she needs emergency hospitalization, the family specifies. “The Islamic Republic is responsible for anything that may happen to our beloved Narges,” the statement said.
“A government based on lies”
An activist against the death penalty and women’s rights, Narges Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Prize in October for “her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight for the promotion of human rights and freedom for all.” She is one of the main faces of the “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising in Iran. The movement, which saw women remove the veil, cut their hair and demonstrate in the streets, was sparked by the death last year of a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, Mahsa Amini, after her arrest in Tehran for non-compliance with the strict Islamic dress code. The protest was severely repressed.
At the beginning of November, Narges Mohammadi secretly sent a message from her cell in which she strongly attacked the power in Tehran. In this message read in French by her daughter, Kiana Rahmani, and posted on the official Nobel website, the activist expresses her “most sincere gratitude” to the Norwegian Nobel committee, once again criticizing the obligation imposed on women in Iran to wear the veil and castigates the Iranian authorities.
“The compulsory hijab is the main source of domination and repression in society, aimed at maintaining and perpetuating an authoritarian religious government,” she declares through the voice of her 17-year-old daughter, a refugee in France with the rest from his family. “A government that has institutionalized deprivation and poverty in society for 45 years. A government based on lies, deception, trickery and intimidation. A government that has jeopardized peace and stability in the region and in the world by its belligerent policies,” she also said.