Nobel Committee Decries 'Inhumane' Denial Of Care To Hunger-Striking Laureate
The Nobel Committee has called on Tehran to give medical help to this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, on hunger strike in Tehran’s Evin prison.
The Nobel Committee has called on Tehran to give medical help to this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, on hunger strike in Tehran’s Evin prison.
The imprisoned activist has been on hunger strike since Monday in Evin Prison to protest the lack of medical attention for sick inmates and the jail withholding medical treatment from her because she refused to wear a mandatory head scarf for a hospital visit.
"The requirement that female inmates must wear a hijab in order to be hospitalized, is inhumane and morally unacceptable," the Norwegian Committee said on Monday.
According to a statement released on her Instagram page by Mohammadi's family, she is protesting against what they describe as "the Islamic Republic's policy of procrastination and lack of medical care for the health and lives of prisoners" and "the policy of either death or compulsory hijab for Iranian women."
The women's rights advocate won the award on October 6 in a rebuke to Tehran's theocratic leaders, who accused the Nobel committee of meddling and politicizing the issue of human rights.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said authorities had not let the 51-year-old go to hospital for heart and lung treatment last week because she had refused to wear a mandatory head scarf for the visit. "This deprivation continues under the order of the prison authorities," HRANA added.
Mohammadi's family, expressing their concerns about her health and physical condition, stated in their announcement that she has needed urgent transfer to a heart and lung center for a week, but after Narges's follow-ups from prison and her lawyer's requests to judicial authorities, the prosecutor has opposed her transfer and refuses to issue the transfer permit.
On October 30, Mohammadi was denied access to proper medical care and a transfer to a hospital for the second time due to her refusal to wear a hijab. Following that, on October 30 and 31, she and some of her fellow inmates staged a sit-in protest in the courtyard of Evin Prison.
"She is willing to risk her life by not wearing the 'forced hijab' even for medical treatment," said a November 1 statement, written before Monday's announcement of the Nobel laureate's hunger strike.
Mahsa Amini, a young woman who was physically assaulted for not wearing compulsory hijab and was killed in a police station in September 2022, and the tragic death of Armita Geravand, a schoolgirl who was subjected to violence by hijab enforcers in the metro and died after 28 days in intensive care, are among the most well-known victims of the compulsory hijab policy of the Islamic Republic.
In recent years, many political prisoners, including Sasan Niknafs, a civil activist, Behnam Mahjoubi, a Gonabadi Dervish religious minority, Baktash Abtin, a poet and filmmaker, and Javad Rouhi, a protester sentenced to death, have lost their lives in prison. The Islamic Republic has not accepted any responsibility for their deaths, which were due to pressure, torture, and the denial of medical care.
In recent years, there have been numerous reports of the lack of medical care for political prisoners and the violation of their right to access proper healthcare by prison authorities in Iran.
According to the Nobel Committee, Mohammadi was recognized for her fight against injustice towards Iranian women and her efforts to promote human rights and freedom for all.
"We are concerned about Narges Mohammadi's physical condition and health," the Free Narges Mohammadi campaign wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken made it clear on a visit to Iraq during a regional tour, that threats from Iran on US assets in the region will be countered, with the backing of the Iraqi government.
Iran-backed Hamas invaded Israel killing 1,400 mostly civilians on October 7, and took at least 241 more hostages into the Gaza Strip.
While the US was quick to voice its support for Israel, backing its right to defend itself and offering military support, Iranian proxies have not only stepped up their attacks on Israel’s borders, but the US has also come under fire in the region.
Over 38 attacks have taken place against US facilities, seeing at least 46 personnel injured, in Syria and Iraq. The US has responded only once, leaving the Biden administration open to accusations of weakness, once again.
Two US fighter jets struck weapons and ammunition facilities used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and its militia groups in Syria, the Pentagon warning the US will take additional measures if attacks by Iran's proxies continue.
Blinken sent a message to “anyone who might seek to take advantage of the conflict in Gaza to threaten our personnel here or anywhere else in the region: Don’t do it.”
Unabashed, he spoke directly to Tehran. “I made it very clear that the attacks, the threats coming from the militia that are aligned with Iran, are totally unacceptable and we will take every necessary step to protect our people.
“We’re not looking for conflict with Iran – we’ve made that very clear – but we’ll do what’s necessary to protect our personnel, be they military or civilian,” he said, claiming Iraq’s premier, Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani, was supportive.
However, following a meeting between al-Sudani and Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Al Khamenei in Tehran, the message looked somewhat more complex.
Khamenei, who has also met in recent days with Hamas’ political leader in exile, Ismail Haniyeh, met with the Iraqi premier, also a Shia muslim, in a bid to hedge support.
“As an important country in the region, Iraq can play a major role in putting political pressure on the US and the occupying regime to stop the massacre of people in Gaza and also in starting a new approach in the Arab and Muslim world,” he wrote on X, as the regime continues to draw the US into the fire.
In no uncertain terms, the regime is doing its utmost to blame the US as the Gaza war offers hope to finally bait the bear. "The longer the current war goes on, the evidence showing the direct role of the US in directing the crimes of the Zionist regime in Gaza becomes more pronounced,” he said on Monday.
Speaking on CNN, former national security advisor to ex-President Donald Trump, John Bolton, criticized Biden for calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, supporting Israel’s argument that it will only allow the group, proscribed by countries including the US and UK, to regroup.
“The Biden admin is sliding away from its support of Israel. Nobody has taken into account how Hamas and its puppet masters in Tehran are manipulating public opinion in the US and elsewhere,” he said.
He said that not only is one of America’s closest allies under multiple attacks and threats of attacks by what he calls “a coalition of some of America’s greatest enemies”, he said the conflict is “extraordinarily serious”.
“This isn't about the Gaza Strip, it’s about the survival of Israel and threats to the United States,” he said. While the fears of conflict escalating beyond Israel and Gaza are at the top of the global agenda, Bolton said “the conflict has already spread”, blaming Iran for its being at the root of the escalation.
“There is no doubt here that Iran has called the shots from the beginning. We don’t know what their full strategy is but the center of this conflict is with the mullahs in Tehran,” he said. Attacks on Israel have come from Iran-backed proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq.
Slamming the lack of action by the Biden administration in the face of mounting aggression, he said Biden’s deterrence tactics had failed as attacks continue.
“If Iranian surrogate groups kill Americans, the Iranians need to pay a price for it. They don’t take our restraint as a good will gesture, they take it as a weakness,” Bolton said.
Israeli journalist Ben Caspit said Sunday that Hamas's mass infiltration and onslaught leaving 1,400 mostly civilians dead and 241 hostages taken into Gaza, was originally intended to take place during last Passover's Seder meal Jewish holiday in April, which happened to coincide with Quds Day – an annual anti-Israel event initiated by the founder of the Islamic Republic, Rouhollah Khomeini.
According to the report, the Islamic Republic decided to delay the organized assault on civilians to Simchat Torah due to reasons that are unclear. However, Caspit speculated, it could have been postponed due to Tehran’s informal behind-the-scenes talks with the United States, which culminated in the release of Iran's oil revenues frozen in South Korea under US sanctions.
About $6 billion was freed up for Iran mid-September after Iran released five Iranian-Americans held in Tehran in exchange for five Iranians imprisoned in the US. Hamas declared war on Israel less than a month later. Iran openly supports Hamas and supplies military technology, training and logistics for its so-called ‘resistance’ against Israel and even held celebrations for the attack but insists it had no role in it.
The extent of the regime’s involvement in the Hamas attack, if and when it is established, would likely inform the nature of the response from Israel and the United States. Many in Washington are already pushing for retaliatory measures, including re-freezing the $6 billion. US Senators have written to President Biden, demanding that access to the money (currently held in a Qatari bank) be denied.
Hamas’ attack on Israel has enraged US officials who had warned the Biden administration of the consequences of its lenient approach to the regime in Iran. “Make no mistake— Hamas's genocidal violence was partly enabled by Biden unfreezing billions of dollars to Iran,” Senator Ted Cruz said Tuesday.
Last year in an interview with Al Jazeera, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh publicly thanked Tehran for supporting it with $70 million to help it develop missiles and defense systems, saying the regime is the terror group’s biggest donor. Gabriel Noronha, a former special advisor for the Iran Action Group at the US Department of State, said last month, Iran was giving Hamas $100 million a year in 2017 and with the Trump administration's maximum pressure policy on Iran, the Islamist group had to adopt austerity measures, but today “Hamas is getting $350 million from Iran that is 93 percent of its budget.”
The information was uncovered during the interrogation of Hamas militants who participated in the October 7 massacre, codenamed operation al-Aqsa flood (storm in Persian). The US considers Iran "at least complicit” in the attack, the State Department said last month but insisted it had no evidence of Tehran's direct involvement. Caspit noted that the information "might not have reached decision-makers or passed a validity test. But it did reach the ears of interrogators.”
Elsewhere in his reports, Caspit said that the October 7 date was chosen partly due to its proximity to the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, a three-week armed conflict fought in October 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria.