Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi goes on a hunger strike while imprisoned in Iran
- Mohammadi is serving multiple sentences amounting to about 12 years in prison on charges including spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic
- The women’s rights advocate said the hunger strike was in protest against what she said was the jail’s failure to give her access to medical care
Imprisoned Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi began a hunger strike on Monday in protest against what she said was the jail’s failure to give her access to medical care, the activist HRANA news agency reported.
The women’s rights advocate won the award on October 6 in a rebuke to Tehran’s theocratic leaders, who accused the Nobel committee of meddling and politicising the issue of human rights.
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2023 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Iranian women’s rights campaigner Narges Mohammadi
HRANA said authorities had not let the 51-year-old go to hospital for heart and lung treatment last week because she had refused to wear a mandatory headscarf for the visit. The news agency did not name its sources.
Iran’s judiciary did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
“Mohammadi has gone on a hunger strike to protest against the authorities’ failure to address her demands, including their refusal to transfer her to a specialist hospital,” HRANA reported.
“This deprivation continues under the order of the prison authorities,” HRANA added.
On October 29 and 30, Mohammadi and a group of women held in Iran’s Evin prison protested against the refusal by prison authorities to send Mohammadi to hospital for treatment, according to a statement by Mohammadi’s family sent to Reuters.
“She is willing to risk her life by not wearing the ‘forced hijab’ even for medical treatment,” said the November 1 statement, written before Monday’s announcement of the Nobel laureate’s hunger strike.
Mohammadi has been arrested more than a dozen times in her life and this is her third time in Evin prison since 2012.
She is serving multiple sentences amounting to about 12 years imprisonment on charges including spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic.
“We are concerned about Narges Mohammadi’s physical condition and health,” the Free Narges Mohammadi campaign wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said Mohammadi starting a hunger strike shows the seriousness of the situation and expressed “deep concern” about Mohammadi’s health.
“We urge Iranian authorities to provide Mohammadi and other inmates whatever medical assistance they need,” the committee said, adding that the requirement for female inmates in Iran to wear a hijab to be hospitalised is “inhumane” and “morally unacceptable”.
