The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned Iranian women's rights advocate Narges Mohammadi will help shine a light on the plight of the country's women, her former cellmate Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe said on Saturday.
British-Iranian aid worker Zaghari-Ratcliffe was released and returned to London last year, nearly six years after she was arrested at Tehran airport on her way home from an Iranian New Year's trip to see her parents with her young daughter.
The Nobel committee said the prize honored those behind recent unprecedented demonstrations in Iran and called for the release of Mohammadi, 51, who has campaigned for three decades for women's rights and abolition of the death penalty.
"I am very thrilled," Zaghari-Ratcliffe said at an event at the British opposition Labor Party's annual women's conference in northern England, paying tribute to Mohammadi's "fearless fighting for freedom".
"I think it will also shine a light on the plight of us as Iranian women so it will be good for everyone, for all of us," she added.
"Narges being given the Nobel Peace Prize is a great recognition of the fight of women in Iran and I think Narges is a symbol of all the injustice that is going on in Iran and the Iranian women."
In the 2000s, the Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi, who is the president of the Center for Human Rights Defenders, won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Arrested more than a dozen times in her life, and held three times in Evin prison since 2012, Mohammadi has been unable to see her husband for 15 years and her children for seven.
The Center for Human Rights Defenders commented that after years of the people’s struggle against all forms of discrimination, injustice, dictatorship, murdering people in streets and prisons, deliberately shooting protesters in their eyes, and medieval torture, this award echoes the “woman, freedom, life” slogan.
The Writers' Association of Iran also welcomed this move, saying that the political life of this activist “Reflects part of the repression, violations, and pressure in the Iranian prisons.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said on his X account that Qassem Soleimani was “The most deserving symbol of international peace”.
His statement sparked a wide-scope ridicule among the Iranians on social media platforms.
Iran's Foreign Ministry on Friday condemned the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Mohammadi. "The action of the Nobel Peace Committee is a political move," ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said.
"The Nobel Peace committee has awarded a prize to a person convicted of repeated law violations and criminal acts," he said in a statement carried by state media.
Kayhan newspaper - known to be close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's office – also slammed the Prize.
A total of 320 political and civil activists said that this was a new opportunity for the “woman, freedom, life” movement.
"For decades, Narges Mohammadi has been a vocal advocate for women and girls in Iran. This Nobel Prize is a well-deserved recognition of her courage, and the hope that she represents—not only for the women in Iran but for women fighting repression and violence around the world,” posted former US President Barack Obama on his X account.
