Standing in the Storm
The Story of a Woman Who Won’t Surrender
Standing in the Storm, Narges Mohammadi, a 51-year-old human rights activist who has spent about 10 of the past 14 years in prison and is currently in the Islamic Republic’s prison, says she will continue her fight for human rights even if it costs her life. Narges Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, October 6, and the Nobel Committee stated that the slogan ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ accurately reflects her sacrifice and work.
Who is Narges Mohammadi?
Narges Mohammadi was born on April 21, 1972, in a middle-class family in Zanjan. She told Angelina Jolie, the famous actress, that from childhood she witnessed executions, imprisonment, torture, and violations of women’s rights in school, street, and society, and had been arrested multiple times by the Revolutionary Committees and the Moral Security Police. During her childhood, the son of one aunt and the daughter of another aunt, both teachers, were executed, and her uncle was a political prisoner for years.
She was a student of applied physics who wanted to continue her studies in physics up to a Ph.D. level, but her life’s path changed forever in the city of Qazvin, where she was a student at Imam Khomeini International University, turning her into one of the most outspoken critics of the Iranian government.
Narges Mohammadi began her civil activities by establishing a mountaineering board and simultaneously a student organization called the Enlightened Students’ Association in the same city. Although this organization was never officially recognized, it played an influential role in the first city council elections and the sixth parliamentary elections.
Taghi Rahmani, a political activist and Narges Mohammadi’s husband, says Narges’s motivation for activism and her courage were very strong from the beginning. As a political activist during Mohammad Khatami’s government, he was able to give speeches at all universities except this one, but Narges worked at this university.
According to Mr. Rahmani, Narges Mohammadi expanded this student organization throughout the city to the point where it introduced candidates in the first city council elections and was very active in the sixth parliamentary elections. He says that through this Enlightened Students’ Association, Narges Mohammadi connected with the national-religious activists in Tehran and began writing articles in the Payam-e Hajar publication. Her arrests and suppression began from that time.
In 1999, she married Taghi Rahmani, a prominent political figure of the time who had spent years in prison, and his arrest in the case known as the National-Religious led her closer to human rights activities.
Taghi Rahmani says he realized at the age of forty that democracy is impossible without civil society, but Narges reached this realization much younger. With the formation of the Defenders of Human Rights Center in 2002 by Shirin Ebadi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize a year later, Narges Mohammadi continued her human rights activities as the spokesperson of this center, alongside lawyers like Abdolfattah Soltani, Mohammad Seifzadeh, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, and Mohammad Sharif, who defended prisoners without lawyers, held seminars against unjust laws, and supported trade unions.
Mohammad Seifzadeh says Narges Mohammadi, as the spokesperson for the Defenders of Human Rights Center, played a very important role in taking a stand against human rights violations and was a true spokesperson for all the oppressed, never discriminating between insiders and outsiders.
Narges Mohammadi, as the spokesperson for the Defenders of Human Rights Center, became a key figure in reporting on political and civil prisoners and protesting human rights violations. With the formation of the National Peace Council in 2007, when the threat of military attack on Iran was higher than ever, and being elected as the head of the executive board of this 75-member council, her credibility doubled. Members included Simin Behbahani, Bahman Keshavarz, and Rakhshan Bani-Etemad.
Facing Suppression and Repression
Two years later, in 2009, Narges Mohammadi, who had been employed by the Iranian Engineering Inspection Company in 2001, was fired from this company. She was told she had to withdraw from the Defenders of Human Rights Center. That same year, she was banned from leaving the country, and a year later, in May 2010, she was imprisoned while Ali and Kiana, Narges and Taghi’s twins, were three and a half years old at the time.
During this period of imprisonment, Narges Mohammadi suffered from muscle spasms and temporary paralysis, an issue that, due to public and international pressure, led to her temporary release. However, this temporary freedom did not last long. She was imprisoned again, and her membership in the Defenders of Human Rights Center became an accusation that, along with several political charges, resulted in a six-year prison sentence.
During this time, in 2011, Taghi Rahmani left Iran after enduring over 14 years in prison in the Islamic Republic and settled in France. Muscle paralysis and nervous attacks sent Narges Mohammadi from prison to the hospital again in July 2012, and this time she was released due to her inability to endure punishment due to her physical condition.
A year later, in 2013, alongside figures like Simin Behbahani and Mohammad Maleki, she launched the Campaign for the Step-by-Step Abolition of the Death Penalty, known by its acronym ‘LAGAM,’ which led to Narges Mohammadi’s arrest in 2014.
In that year, Narges Mohammadi met and spoke with Catherine Ashton, the then High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, in Tehran about human rights violations in Iran. This time, due to opposing the execution of six Sunni prisoners in Rajai Shahr prison under the pretext of collaborating with ISIS, she was arrested, and Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Salavati, sentenced her to 16 years in prison. Under Article 134 of the Islamic Penal Code, the most severe sentence, which was 10 years for forming and running an illegal group, was enforceable.
Even in prison, Narges Mohammadi continued her activities and stances to the point that after announcing a sit-in in prison in solidarity with the families of those killed in November 2019, she was exiled to Zanjan prison. The intensity of the violence used by the agents during her transfer to Zanjan prison was shocking even for her. Her father, Karim Mohammadi, announced on October 28, 2020, after visiting her in Zanjan prison, that he had seen bruises on Narges’s body in the meeting room.
Narges Mohammadi was finally released from Zanjan prison on October 7, 2020, using the law to reduce imprisonment sentences. She was arrested again on November 16, 2021, during a security forces raid on a mourning ceremony at the grave of Ebrahim Ketabdar, one of those killed in November 2019, and was transferred to Qarchak Varamin prison after being beaten. On February 22 of the same year, she was granted medical leave for heart vascular surgery.
Narges’s Account of Torture and Abuse
Narges Mohammadi returned to prison on April 12, 2022, while, in addition to her previous sentence, new cases were opened against her due to her activities in prison, and this time she was sentenced to 10 years and 9 months in prison and 154 lashes.
Narges Mohammadi exposed the sexual torture of political prisoners and accused Gholamreza Ziaei, one of the heads of Evin prison, of sexual assault. She stood with the grieving mothers, wrote about solitary confinement and white torture, and published numerous letters warning about the condition of prisons, detention centers, and violence against prisoners and detainees of nationwide protests, becoming an increasingly prominent figure in opposition to the Islamic Republic year after year.
Mansoureh Shojaee, a women’s rights activist and friend of Narges Mohammadi living in the Netherlands, says Narges’s identity became fully clear as a narrator, but due to the geography of the prison in which she was confined, she focused on the prison. If a prisoner was tortured or raped and could not speak, Narges would speak for them.
Years Away from Home
Narges Mohammadi was in prison in 2015 when Ali and Kiana, her children, left Iran at the age of eight and joined their father in France. She told Angelina Jolie that from July 17, 2015, to July 17, 2016, and also from August 2019 to August 2020, she was deprived of contact with Ali and Kiana, and to this day, this prohibition continues. Dreams are the only point of connection between me and Ali and Kiana, but every time I see them in my dreams, they still have the faces they had at eight years old.
The Offer That Was Refused
Throughout these years, Narges Mohammadi has been under additional pressure. She told some media outlets that Ministry of Intelligence agents pressured her to leave Iran. Mohammad Seifzadeh, a lawyer and colleague of Narges Mohammadi, says they spoke to me about her leaving to join her family abroad, but she did not accept and chose to endure the prison and all its hardships.
Narges Mohammadi has said about enduring pressures, abuses, and hardships that for me, struggle and resistance give meaning to life. I live while resisting and fighting, and I am truly both satisfied and happy with this lifestyle. I remember dancing in solitary confinement, even when I was not feeling well, because that was part of life. The day had come, the sun had risen, and I was in the cell deprived of everything and everyone, even a sound and even a light, but I thought that this is a kind of life that I have chosen.
Narges Mohammadi has now won the Nobel Peace Prize, an award announced on the anniversary of the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ protests, with the same title awarded to Narges Mohammadi. She has previously won numerous awards, including the Sakharov Prize, Mother Teresa Foundation, Palme Foundation, United Nations Press Freedom Prize, and the Courage in Journalism Award from Reporters Without Borders. Late November this year, an Instagram account attributed to Narges Mohammadi reported that for the second and third time, she went to the hospital without a headscarf and wearing a suit and skirt, and despite the Tehran prosecutor’s order, she refused to wear the mandatory hijab for hospital transfer.