OSLO: Teenage twins of Iranian dissident Narges Moham­madi rec­eived the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf on Sunday, as she deno­unced a “tyrannical and anti-wo­m­en religious” government in Iran.

Narges is the fifth laureate to receive the award while detained, after Ger­m­any’s Carl von Ossietzky, Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, China’s Liu Xiaobo and Belarus’s Ales Beliatski.

She has been held in Tehran’s Evin prison since 2021, while her two children Ali and Kiana have been living in France since 2015. She has campaigned against the compulsory wearing of hijab and death penalty in Iran.

A speech, Narges managed to smuggle out of her cell, was read out at the ceremony in Oslo. “I am a Middle Eastern woman, and come from a region which, despite its rich civilisation, is now trapped amid war, the fire of terrorism, and extremism,” she said in a message.

“The Iranian people will dismantle obstruction and despotism through their persistence,” she was quoted as saying.

A chair was left symbolically empty at the ceremony, where her portrait was displayed. Narges is one of the women spearheading the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising against the Iranian government for months after the death of Mahsa Amini, 22.

The other Nobel prizes, in literature, chemistry, medicine, physics and economics, were to be awarded later at ceremonies in Stockholm.

In a speech, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, said: “Narges Mohammadi’s struggle is also comparable to that of Albert Lutuli, Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, which took place over a period of more than 30 years before the apartheid system in South Africa came to an end.”

Arrested 13 times, sentenced five times to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes, Moha­mmadi has spent much of the past two decades in and out of jail. Her twin children, who have not seen their mother for almost nine years, don’t know if they’ll ever see her alive again.

“Personally I’m rather pessimistic,” Kiana Mohammadi told reporters, while her brother Ali said he remained “very, very optimistic”.

Protests in Iran triggered by Amini’s death have been severely repre­ssed. The Iran Human Rights group says 551 demonstrators were killed by security forces, and thousands arrested.

On Saturday, the lawyer for Amini’s family said her parents and brother, who were due to receive the European Parliam­ent’s Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought on Amini’s behalf at a ceremony on December 13, was being prohibited from leaving Iran.

Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2023