Imprisoned activist wins Nobel Peace Prize for fight for women's rights in Iran
A jailed activist has won the Nobel Peace Prize for her brave campaigning over women's rights in Iran.
Narges Mohammadi was handed the prestigious accolade on Friday for fighting against the oppression of women in the nation, which is led by a hard-line fundamentalist regime.
The 51-year-old has spent much of the last two decades behind bars, and is currently serving a sentence of 10 years and nine months for national security and propaganda against the state. A five-minute trial also sentenced her to 154 lashes, though punishment rights groups do not believe this has yet been carried out.
Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee who announced the prize in Oslo, said: "She fights for women against systematic discrimination and oppression".
A dove was released at noon from a window of the Nobel Peace Centre following the announcement of this year's laureates. Iranian authorities arrested Ms Mohammadi in November after she attended a memorial for a victim of the government's harsh crackdown on the 2019 anti-government protests. Before being jailed, she was vice president of the banned Defenders of Human Rights Centre in Iran, a group set up by Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.
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The Nobel Prizes come with a a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor (£820,000), and winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma at the award ceremonies in December. People who can make nominations include former Nobel Peace Prize winners, members of the committee, heads of states, members of parliaments and professors of political science, history and international law.
Narges Mohammadi's peace prize is the fifth of this year's Nobel prizes to be announced. On Thursday, the Nobel committee awarded Norwegian writer Jon Fosse the prize for literature, while they day before the chemistry prize went to U.S. scientists Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov. The physics prize went Tuesday to French-Swedish physicist Anne L'Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz. Hungarian-American Katalin Kariko and American Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday. Nobels season ends on Monday with the announcement of the winner of the economics prize, formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
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