WOMEN, LIFE, FREEDOM: Jailed Iranian Nobel Peace Laureate Hospitalised

‘Persepolis’ (2007), by Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi, is an animated film about a precocious and outspoken Iranian girl growing up during the Islamic Revolution.

TEHRAN — On Wednesday, Iranian rights activist Narges Mohammadi was hospitalised after going on a hunger strike while in jail earlier this week. According to her family, the Nobel Peace Prize winner was on strike against "the Islamic Republic's policy of delaying and neglecting medical care for sick inmates, resulting in the loss of the health and lives of individuals” and "the policy of 'death' or 'mandatory hijab' for Iranian women”. 

For more than a year, women in Iran have been protesting the Iranian government’s strict hijab law and other discriminatory laws under the movement called “Women, Life, Freedom”. Since the movement began in September 2022, the regime has killed more than 500 young protestors and incarcerated more than 20,000 people in an attempt to suppress the movement. 

In late October, Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance published a list of female actors barred from their profession for appearing in public without a headscarf. Culture and Islamic Guidance Minister Mohammad Mehdi Esmaili said it was not possible to work with those who did not observe the mandatory hijab law. 

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said Mohammadi was fighting “against the oppression of women in Iran and… to promote human rights and freedom for all.” In her 20 years of activism, Mohammadi has been arrested 13 times in total, convicted five times and sentenced to a total of 31 years in prison. 

The European Parliament has now awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to the Iranian movement for women’s rights and to Jina Mahsa Amini, whose custodial death last year sparked massive protests. Parliament President Roberta Metsola announced the EU body’s support of "the brave and defiant who continue to fight for equality, dignity and freedom in Iran” and “those who, even from prison, continue to keep Women, Life and Freedom alive.”

With the Russian feminist group Pussy Riot, Cinema for Peace organized an initiative to show support to the women’s movement during the Iran-US World Cup match in Doha. The initiative involved staging a protest wearing Iranian football jerseys with the names of victims of Iran's morality police and chanting ‘Women, Life, Freedom’.

‘Nasrin’, by Jeff Kaufman, an immersive portrait of one of the world's most courageous human rights activists and political prisoners, Nasrin Sotoudeh, and of Iran's remarkably resilient women's rights movement.

‘When God Sleeps’, by Till Schauder, a rap-punk-rock documentary about an Iranian musician Shahin Najafi who is forced into hiding after hardline clerics issue a fatwa for his death, incensed by a rap song that focuses on the oppression of women and human rights abuses.

‘Women in Shroud’ by Farid Haerinejad and Mohammad Reza Kazemi, follows a dedicated group of Iranian lawyers and activists who work together to counter the injustice of the death penalty.