# Narges Mohammadi Narges Mohammadi (born 1972) is an Iranian human-rights activist who won the 2023 [[Nobel Peace Prize]] "for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all" — an award she received while imprisoned in Tehran's Evin Prison. ## A Life of Resistance from Behind Bars A trained physicist and journalist, Mohammadi became a leading figure at the Defenders of Human Rights Center founded by [[Shirin Ebadi]], campaigning against the death penalty, solitary confinement, and the abuse of political prisoners. The regime has prosecuted her repeatedly over two decades, sentencing her to a cumulative total of many years and dozens of lashes across multiple cases. She has spent much of the last decade incarcerated — separated from her children, denied medical care, and held in conditions she has worked to expose from the inside. ## The Activist Inside the Prison What distinguishes Mohammadi is that imprisonment never silenced her. From inside Evin she has smuggled out reports, statements, and a book documenting the systematic abuse — including sexual violence and "white torture" (sensory deprivation) — of women political prisoners. During the [[Woman Life Freedom]] uprising sparked by the death of [[Mahsa Amini]], she organized solidarity protests within the prison itself and became one of the movement's most powerful voices, accepting the 2023 Nobel through a statement read by her children in Oslo while she remained behind bars. ## Why It Matters For the vault, Mohammadi embodies the cost and the courage of internal resistance to the Islamic Republic — the human reality behind the [[Woman Life Freedom]] movement and the [[International Democratic Opposition Hub]]. Her 2023 Nobel, like [[Shirin Ebadi]]'s in 2003, signaled international recognition that the most legitimate Iranian opposition is the home-grown, rights-based, women-led struggle — not the externally backed factions. She is living proof that the regime's repression has not extinguished, and arguably has only intensified, the demand for freedom. *See also: [[Iranian History Hub]], [[Woman Life Freedom]], [[Shirin Ebadi]], [[Mahsa Amini]]*