OSLO: Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi will begin a new hunger strike from her prison cell in Iran as the prize is awarded in Oslo on Sunday, her family said on Saturday.

Mohammadi, who has campaigned against the compulsory wearing of the hijab and the death penalty in Iran, will go on hunger strike “in solidarity” with a religious minority, her brother and husband told a press conference in the Norwegian capital on the eve of the Nobel award ceremony.

“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,” her younger brother, Hamidreza Mohammadi, said in a brief opening statement.

The 51-year-old activist’s husband, Taghi Rahmani, went on to explain that the strike was a gesture of solidarity with the religious minority, two of whose leading figures are also on hunger strike.

“She said that ‘I will start my hunger strike on the day that I am being granted this prize, perhaps then the world will hear more about it’,” he explained.

Iran’s largest religious minority, the Baha’i community is the target of discrimination in many areas of society, according to its representatives.

Mohammadi already went on a hunger strike for several days at the beginning of November to obtain the right to be transferred to hospital without covering her head.

She was awarded the Nobel prize in October “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran”.

Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2023