The Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi has begun a hunger strike in an Iranian prison in protest of what she said was her unlawful detention, according to a statement from her family released on Wednesday.
Ms. Mohammadi, a prominent Iranian rights and democracy activist, has been arrested and imprisoned repeatedly on charges of threatening national security.
Ms. Mohammadi was on a hunger strike most recently in 2023, when her family said she was being denied medical care while in detention. Ms. Mohammadi was allowed to temporarily leave prison for treatment in 2024 but was arrested again last December.
The statement said the 53-year-old activist had been on hunger strike since Monday, protesting her continued detention, poor conditions of confinement and lack of contact with family or legal counsel. Many detainees in Iran face such conditions, it added.
Ms. Mohammadi received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 for her years campaigning against government repression and for women’s rights, often using civil disobedience tactics like organized protests and sit-ins. She received the award in absentia because she was serving a 10-year sentence in Iran’s notorious Evin prison.
In the statement on Wednesday, Ms. Mohammadi’s husband, Taghi Rahmani, said she suffered from several serious health conditions, including heart problems and lung complications. She also requires regular, specialized medical care after a bone graft surgery last year — treatment that her family said was denied during her current detention.
“We are gravely concerned for her life,” said Kiana Rahmani, Ms. Mohammadi’s daughter and a co-president of the Narges Mohammadi Foundation, which represents her work. “She, along with all political prisoners in Iran, must be released immediately.”
Ms. Mohammadi’s family said that she was allowed one phone call to her family after she was detained in December, and she told them that Iranian authorities beat her so severely that she was taken twice to an emergency room. She has not been allowed to make contact with her family since, they said.
At the time, Iranian authorities did not respond to a request for comment. The general prosecutor in Mashhad, the city where she was detained, told the news agency Tasnim that Ms. Mohammedi and the other detainees were “being held in a lawful detention facility with their citizens’ rights respected” as a legal investigation was conducted.
According to Ms. Mohammadi’s foundation, her family and close associates have been pressured by security agencies to refrain from sharing any information about her condition.
Her reported hunger strike comes amid a severe and continuing crackdown in Iran after nationwide anti-government protests that began in late December.
Authorities crushed the protests with lethal force, killing at least 6,883 people, according to Human Rights Activists News Agency, a rights group based in the United States. Since then, several rights groups have said that about 40,000 protesters have been arrested, many of whom they say have had no legal representation or due process.
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