Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi will start a new hunger strike from her prison lockup in Iran as the prize is awarded in the Norwegian capital Oslo on Sunday in her absence, news agency AFP stated her family as saying.
At a media conference on Saturday in Oslo, Mohammadi’s husband, Taghi Rahmani, their twin children, and her brother, who are representing the Nobel laureate at the prize ceremony, said the new strike is to show unity towards the Baha’i religious minority in Iran.
“She is not here with us today, she is in prison and she will be on a hunger strike in solidarity with a religious minority but we feel her presence here,” AFP quoted her younger brother, Hamidreza Mohammadi, as saying in a brief inaugural statement.
On Sunday, at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Oslo, joined by the Norwegian royal family and other VIPs, the twins will recite a speech that their mother managed to smuggle out of her prison cell.
The 51-year-old Narges Mohammadi was awarded the noble prize for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran.
“On International Human Rights Day, 10th of December, I will also go on a hunger strike in protest against violations of human rights in Iran and in solidarity with the hunger strike of Baha’i women prisoners in Evin Prison,” said a post on Mohammadi’s Instagram account.
Held in Tehran’s Evin prison, Mohammadi led another hunger strike in November to get the right to be moved to the hospital without covering her head.
Arrested 13 times and 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, the AFP reported.
