A woman described as Iran’s “Nelson Mandela” wins the Nobel peace prize

the Economist-Oct 6th2023

No sooner was she out of prison than Narges Mohammadi would post videos on social media of the abuse she had suffered inside. She would be arrested and jailed once again. Even as they hauled her back to prison, she would post, laughing at her captors. She would spend her medical leave writing up the testimonies of other prisoners. And once back in jail she would compile reports of human-rights violations and smuggle them out.

She would organise sit-ins against guards who wielded cattle-prods. As blows rained down on her she led her fellow prisoners in chants of anti-fascist anthems and the cry which for a year has echoed across Iran: “woman, life, freedom”. The only way her interrogators could silence her was to lock her in solitary, “a sealed tin” as she calls it, at least once for months on end. Even then her example gave hope to the women in Ward 209, the block the Ministry of Intelligence uses for interrogations in the regime’s notorious prison, Evin, in the Iranian capital, Tehran. She shrugged off her interrogators’ hints to go into exile, even when they offered her instructions for how to flee through Kurdistan. She spurned their pleas to ask for a pardon and so be done with the punishment. And when abuse worsened, she recorded it in minute detail in her book, “White Torture”, along with her torturers’ names.

On October 6th the world heard her cry. The Norwegian Nobel committee gave her its annual peace prize. It was honouring, it said, “her fight against the oppression of women in Iran”. She could not collect it since she was still locked in Evin. But she managed to relay her thanks, saying that the award would boost her resilience after 13 arrests and sentences totalling 31 years and 154 lashes, some for spreading propaganda against the system.

Ms Mohammadi personifies Iran’s growing popular resistance. She was a child of the Islamic revolution (she was six when it happened in 1979), a physicist, a journalist, a founder of a human-rights group and a powerful voice against the suppression of the Green protest movement that erupted after a disputed election in 2009. First arrested in 1998, she was regularly hauled off to Evin. And a decade ahead of her time, she shrugged off her veil and called for the theocracy to go, recalls an Iranian writer who knows her, appealing instead for non-violent revolution and a new age of democracy.

Until a year ago, few Iranians had heard of her. Many confused her with an Iranian film star by the same name. But after the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old woman who died in custody after she was detained for wearing a “bad” veil, she became an inspiration for the women who took to the streets protesting against mandatory scarves and were then hauled off to jail in their thousands.

The female-led protests sparked by Ms Amini’s death petered out earlier this year after over 500 people were killed. The first anniversary of her death on September 16th passed without fuss. But tensions have been growing again since a 16-year-old schoolgirl, Armita Geravand, collapsed on a subway earlier this month with a head injury. Many were quick to blame the morality police that the regime had sent back onto the streets. Anti-regime graffiti is back on the walls. In a sign of nervousness, the regime is said to have pulled its morality squads from the subways in recent days and asked guards to allow unveiled women to enter government premises.

In a country anticipating another round of protests, some wonder whether Ms Mohammadi’s prize might bring people to the streets once again. Across the country Iranians greeted the news with delight. “She fucked the regime,” cried a student from Iran’s second city, Mashhad, in a voice message. For a rudderless opposition, Ms Mohammadi could provide a steer. Historically many Iranian leaders, including the incumbent, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, emerged from their country’s torture chambers. As the student from Mashhad put it, “she might yet be our Nelson Mandela.” ■

Read more on original

: