On behalf of the 51-year-old, who is in prison at home, her children Kiana and Ali Rahmani accepted the award at Oslo City Hall. The 17-year-old twins read out a speech written by their mother in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. An empty chair symbolically stood on the stage for Mohammadi.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded Mohammadi the prize in early October “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.” On Saturday, the human rights activist announced on her Instagram page, which friends abroad maintain for her, that she had gone on a three-day hunger strike. “On the day of the Nobel Prize ceremony, I want to be the voice of the Iranians who protest against injustice and oppression,” wrote the 51-year-old.
The Nobel Prizes go back to the Swedish chemist, inventor and entrepreneur Alfred Nobel (1833 to 1896) and are traditionally presented on the anniversary of his death, December 10th – the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, the other awards for literature, medicine, physics, chemistry and economics in Stockholm. This year, each category of the award is endowed with prize money of eleven million Swedish crowns (just under 980,000 euros).
