Nobel Peace Prize 2023 to Narges Mohammadi. In Oslo, an empty chair

The Iranian activist has been detained since 2021 in the Evin maximum security prison in Tehran Narges Mohammadiwho on the very day she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, started a hunger strike, in solidarity with the Baha’i religious minority.

In Oslo City Hall, during the Nobel Prize award ceremony her chair on stage remained symbolically empty, with a photo of her positioned behind it, chosen by the activist herself, which shows her smiling and in colorful clothes. The people who accepted the award and read the acceptance speech written by her mother were her twin children, Kiana and Ali, aged 17, who live in exile in Paris with his father Taghi and they haven’t seen Mohammadi for 7 years.

The twins presided over a press conference in Oslo in recent days and on that occasion Kiana Rahmani read a message in which their mother Mohammadi praised the role played by the international media in «transmit to the world the voice of dissidents, protesters and human rights defenders”.

The girl also said she had little hope to see his mother again: «Maybe I’ll see her again in 30 or 40 years, but I think I won’t see her again. However, it doesn’t matter, because my mother will always live in my heart, values ​​that are worth fighting for.”

Who is Narges Mohammadi

In his thank you message, Narges Mohammadi condemned Iran’s “tyrannical and misogynistic religious regime”. She strongly opposed the requirement for women to wear the hijab and the death penalty in the country.
And the 19th woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and second Iranian after the human rights activist Shirin Ebadi, who received it in 2003. In the 122-year history of the award it is the fifth time the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to a person in prison or under house arrest.
The award ceremony for the other Nobel Prizes will continue next Sunday Stockholmin Sweden.