The executive director of Amnesty International, Pedro Neto, highlights the many years that Narges Mohammadi has already been in prison and hopes that this Nobel Prize winner will pressure the Iranian authorities to release her.
“The last time she was detained, and she still is, was in 2021 and therefore she has worked for many years and has dedicated her life to defending human rights in Iran and defending gender equality in Iran as well. It is a woman who really deserves this. light because she was also tortured with light in prison. We have stories, and she is a prisoner of our conscience, of one of the tortures that they performed on her, they were like intense lights for 24 hours a day even in confined spaces, inside a confined room, even without access to fresh air and air circulation. There are also reports of torture including whipping, in addition to the sleep deprivation that I have already mentioned. She, because of this, suffered a lot in terms of health. He was denied medical attention. One of Amnesty International’s last urgent actions was precisely that, to press for medical attention. He also spent a lot of time in solitary confinement. I hope it is a tribute from this Nobel Peace Prize winner of the Nobel Committee. Above all, draw attention and media attention to this woman who has done so much for human rights in Iran and this can be of great help so that the pressure on the authorities leads them to act and change their way of being and treating them. with this woman and release her immediately,” he said TSF Pedro Neto.
Ana Santos Pinto, researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations at the Nova University of Lisbon, remembers that in 2003 Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian lawyer, was the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in the Muslim world precisely for the rights of women.
“This fight for freedom, for life goes far beyond the territory of Iran and the human rights that are defended in Iran are the rights of men and women. The Nobel Prize was awarded to a symbol. This woman is a symbol of struggle and is a symbol of the fight for the most basic rights to be present in public spaces, to be able to dance and dine alone or with friends, to be able to be judges, to be able to occupy leadership positions and to be able to express what women and Men – because both women and men cannot do this – have to oppose the regime in the public space. That is why, 20 years later, the Nobel Prize is again awarded to an Iranian woman for the same cause. for the same principles, which I think makes us wonder if we really achieved a fight with an obvious consequence,” argues Ana Santos Pinto.
In the opinion of the international editor of TSFRicardo Alexandre, Iran ignores this distinction of Narges Mohammadi, just as it has ignored everything else.
“As over the years, Shirin Ebadi, who in fact founded the movement of which Narges Mohammadi is vice-president, has been ignored. I think the Iranian authorities tend to ignore this, to overlook it without changing anything in relation to the The underlying issue, obviously, now has more projection again. The Nobel, in this case, will fundamentally serve this purpose. The “Women, Life and Freedom” movement had a peak of global media attraction last year and for a few months After Amini’s death, But it ended up going unnoticed. We tend to quickly get busy with other things and this will now be an important topic again, a more debated topic, given that Narges Mohammadi is almost an awards veteran, having been in prison since 2016. She was sentenced to 16 years in prison, but I remember that in 2018 she already received the Sakharov Prize for human rights, awarded by the European Parliament, and last year she was considered by the BBC as one of the hundred most inspiring. women of the world,” added Ricardo Alexandre.
In November 2021, Narges Mohammadi was detained by Iranian authorities after attending an event in memory of a victim of the 2019 protests.
In May last year, the European Union asked Iran to reconsider the sentence imposed on Narges Mohammadi, but to no avail. In 2018, Mohammadi, who is an engineer, received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Conscience, awarded by the European Parliament.
She is the 19th woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the second Iranian, after human rights activist Shirin Ebadi received the Nobel Prize in 2003.
Source: TSF
