PARIS: The son and husband of imprisoned Iranian women’s activist Narges Mohammadi on Friday paid tribute to the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
“I am very, very proud of my mother, very happy,” said her 17-year-old son, Ali Rahmani, at a Paris news conference also attended by his father and twin sister.
He had not seen his mother in eight years, he added.
“This prize is an award for her struggle,” he said.
Mohammadi’s husband, Taghi Rahmani, said the prize was also “an award for all the men and the women who fight for Woman, Life, Freedom.”
“Their voices will never be silenced,” he added.
The Nobel award “will give them even more strength to express themselves.”
Rahmani said it was not sure his imprisoned wife had been told she had won the Nobel Prize.
“There’s a chance that she doesn’t know yet,” he said.
Mohammadi, a 51-year-old journalist and activist, has spent much of the past two decades in and out of jail.
The head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee urged Iran to release Mohammadi, a call echoed by the UN. “I appeal to Iran: Do something dignified and release the Nobel laureate, Narges Mohammadi,” chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen said.
Mohammadi was honored “for her fight against the oppression of women and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all,” Reiss-Andersen said.
“Her brave struggle has come with tremendous personal costs. Altogether, the regime has arrested her 13 times, convicted her five times, and sentenced her to 31 years in prison and 154 lashes,” she added.
Mohammadi is the vice president of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, founded by Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, who herself won the Peace Prize in 2003.
“This year’s Peace Prize also recognizes the hundreds of thousands of people who in the preceding year have demonstrated against the theocratic regime’s policies of discrimination and oppression targeting women,” Reiss-Andersen said.
The leaders of France, Germany, the EU, and NATO hailed Friday’s award. Amnesty International called for Mohammadi’s immediate release.
“Her recognition by the Nobel Peace Committee sends a clear message to the authorities that their crackdown on human rights defenders will not go unchallenged,” Amnesty Secretary-General Agnès Callamard said in a statement.
Mohammadi’s brother, Hamidreza Mohammadi, said from Norway, where he lives, that he has not been able to speak with his sister but knows the prize “means a lot to her.”
“The prize means that the world has seen this movement,” but he said it would not affect the situation in Iran.
Mohammadi is the second Iranian to win the Nobel Peace Prize after Ebadi.
The Peace Prize has on five occasions honored jailed activists, including last year’s winner Ales Bialiatski of Belarus, whose prize was accepted by his wife at the ceremony, and Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo in 2010, whose chair remained empty.
