Paris:

Jailed Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi and other female inmates were hurt in clashes that erupted at Tehran’s Evin prison following a spate of executions, her family said, raising new concerns for her health.

Iranian authorities acknowledged a confrontation had taken place on Tuesday but blamed Mohammadi for a “provocation” and denied any of the prisoners had been beaten.

Human rights activist Mohammadi, 52, who won the 2023 prize for her campaigning including against the death penalty, has been jailed since November 2021 and has spent much of the past decade in and out of prison.

The Paris-based family of Mohammadi emphasised it had had no direct contact with her since her right to make phone calls was revoked in November.

But it said it had learnt from several other families of detainees held in Evin that clashes erupted on Tuesday as the female prisoners launched a protest in the yard against the executions.

According to rights groups, around 30 convicts were hanged this week, including Gholamreza (Reza) Rasaei, who the Iranian judiciary said was executed on Tuesday in connection with 2022 protests.

“The protest by prisoners against the execution of Reza Rasaei led to a violent crackdown by prison guards and security agents,” Mohammadi’s family said in a statement late Thursday, citing the reports. 

“Several women who stood in front of the security forces were severely beaten. The confrontation escalated, resulting in physical injuries for some prisoners.”

– ‘Deeply worried’ –

The family said that after being punched in the chest, Mohammadi suffered a respiratory attack and intense chest pain, causing her to collapse and faint on the ground in the prison yard.

She was bruised and treated in the prison infirmary but not transferred to a hospital outside, it said.

“We are deeply worried about her health and well-being under these circumstances,” the family said.

Relatives and supporters had earlier this month raised concern about Mohammadi’s condition, saying they had been informed of the results of medical tests carried out in July “which showed a worrying deterioration of her health”.

In the past eight months, Mohammadi has been suffering from acute back and knee pain, including a slipped disc. In 2021, a stent was placed on one of her main coronary arteries due to a blockage.

Iran’s prison authority denied that prisoners were beaten and blamed the confrontation on Mohammadi and other inmates who it said had broken the lock of an outer door.

Two prisoners “had heart palpitations due to the stress,” but medical examinations determined that their general condition “is favourable,” it said in a statement, according to the Tasnim news agency. 

– ‘Alarmingly high’ –

Reports have suggested increasing tensions in the women’s wing of Evin prison after two Kurdish female activists, Sharifeh Mohammadi and Pakhshan Azizi, were sentenced to death on charges of membership of an outlawed group.

Rights groups say that Iran has intensified the use of capital punishment after a brief lull in the run-up to the June-July election that brought reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian to power.

Authorities executed 29 people at two prisons in the Tehran satellite city of Karaj on Wednesday alone, according to Norway-based Iran Human Rights.

Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, “is extremely concerned” by the reports, spokeswoman Elizabeth Throssell told journalists in Geneva. “This represents an alarmingly high number of executions in such a short period of time.”

Mohammadi has kept campaigning even behind bars and strongly supported the protests that erupted across Iran following the September 2022 death in custody of Mahsa Amini. The 22-year-old Iranian Kurd had been arrested for an alleged breach of Iran’s strict dress rules for women.

She received a new one-year prison term in June for “propaganda against the state”, adding to sentences that already amounted to 12 years and three months of imprisonment, 154 lashes, two years of exile and various social and political restrictions.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Iran’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Narges Mohammadi
| Photo Credit: VIA REUTERS

Iran’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Narges Mohammadi, has been sentenced to another year in prison over her activism, her lawyer said Wednesday.

Mostafa Nili, Mohammadi’s lawyer, said that his client was convicted on a charge of making propaganda against the system. Nili said the sentence came after Ms. Mohammadi urged voters to boycott Iran’s recent parliamentary election, sent letters to lawmakers in Europe and made comments regarding torture and sexual assault suffered by another Iranian journalist and political activist.

Ms. Mohammadi is being held at Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, which houses political prisoners and those with Western ties. She already had been serving a 30-month sentence, to which 15 more months were added in January. Iran’s government has not acknowledged her additional sentencing.

The latest verdict reflects the Iranian theocracy’s anger that she was awarded the Nobel prize last October for years of activism despite a decadeslong government campaign targeting her.

Ms. Mohammadi is the 19th woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the second Iranian woman after human rights activist Shirin Ebadi in 2003. Mohammadi, 52, has kept up her activism despite numerous arrests by Iranian authorities and years behind bars.

In November, Ms. Mohammadi went on a hunger strike over being blocked along with other inmates from getting medical care and to protest the country’s mandatory headscarves for women.

Ms. Mohammadi was a leading light for nationwide, women-led protests sparked by the death last year of a 22-year-old woman in police custody that have grown into one of the most intense challenges to Iran’s theocratic government. That woman, Mahsa Amini, had been detained for allegedly not wearing her headscarf to the liking of authorities.

For observant Muslim women, the head covering is a sign of piety before God and modesty in front of men outside their families. In Iran, the hijab — and the all-encompassing black chador worn by some — has long been a political symbol as well, particularly after becoming mandatory in the years following the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

While women in Iran hold jobs, academic positions and even government appointments, their lives are tightly controlled, in part by laws like the mandatory hijab. Iran and neighboring Taliban-ruled Afghanistan are the only countries to mandate the headscarves. Since Amini’s death, however, more women are choosing not to wear hijab despite an increasing campaign by authorities targeting them and businesses serving them.

Iranian human rights activist and the vice president of the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC) Narges Mohammadi has been chosen for the Peace Nobel.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi has been chosen by the Royal Swedish Academy for the coveted 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.

“The 2023 peace laureate Narges Mohammadi is a woman, a human rights advocate, and a freedom fighter. This year’s NobelPeacePrize also recognises the hundreds of thousands of people who have demonstrated against the theocratic regime’s policies of discrimination and oppression targeting women,” the Academy said.

Last year, the Nobel Peace Prize was jointly awarded to Belarusian human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski, the Russian human rights organisation Memorial, and the Ukrainian human rights organisation Centre for Civil Liberties.

Ms. Mohammadi is currently lodged in a prison in Iran. In fact, the Iranian regime has arrested her 13 times, convicted her five times, and sentenced her to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes.

The motto adopted by the Iranian demonstrators – “Woman – Life – Freedom” – suitably expresses the dedication and work of Narges Mohammadi, the Academy said.

Ms. Mohammadi advocates against death penalty in a country that reports most state executions. A strong advocate of women’s rights since her days as a college student.

Ms. Mohammadi was arrested for the first time in 2011 for her efforts to assist incarcerated activists and their families.

Two years later, after her release on bail, Ms Mohammadi immersed herself in a campaign against use of the death penalty. This lead to her re-arrest in 2015.

Upon her return to prison, she began opposing the regime’s systematic use of torture and sexualised violence against political prisoners, especially women, that is practised in Iranian prisons.

When Kurdish woman Mahsa Jina Amini was killed by Iranian morality police when she was in custody for not covering her head, Iran witnessed one of the largest anti-government protests. Many protestors were lodged in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran, where Ms. Mohammadi was an inmate.

From prison she expressed support for the demonstrators and organised solidarity actions among her fellow inmates. The prison authorities responded by imposing even stricter conditions. She was prohibited from receiving calls and visitors. She, however, managed to smuggle out an article which the New York Times published on the one-year anniversary of Mahsa Jina Amini’s killing, which highlighted the shocking condition of the women inmates, the torture, abuse and solitary confinement they are subjected to.

In 2018, Mohammadi, an engineer and physicist, was awarded the 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prize, which recognizes outstanding leadership or achievements of scientists in upholding human rights. She was close to Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, who founded the banned Defenders of Human Rights Center, and currently its vice president.

The Nobel Prize announcements kicked off on October 2 with the Physiology or Medicine Nobel jointly awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their “discoveries concerning nucleoside base modification that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.

Explained | All about the winners of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize 

The Royal Swedish Academy of Science announced on October 3 that the Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier “for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electro dynamics in matter”

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is shared by three scientists – Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus and Alexei I. Ekimov for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots.

The Nobel announcements will draw to a close on October 9 with the announcement of Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, popularly known as Economic sciences Nobel.

The prizes carry a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000) and will be handed out on Dec. 10. The money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, in 1895.