For the last 43 years, women in Iran have lost their basic human rights. This includes social, economic, legal as well as basic cultural rights. Not only are they treated significantly inferior to men, the simple thought of standing up for their rights literally means endangering their very lives. Indeed, the teachings of some of the major and influential clergy in Iran sees women as "animals" created purely to serve men and their needs and wants.
Women's plight in Iran
Recently, the hijab (full head covering) has become an important symbol of this oppression of women in Iran. This demand by the Islamic Regime of Iran and its clergy has been violently enforced through beatings, vehement pulling of their hair, dragging them on the ground by their hair, rape and other atrocities and clear violation their basic human rights. The enforcement is devastating for any human being at anytime in human history but it is exponentially more devastating for every citizen of the world to think that it is happening now, this day and this moment as one reads this, in 2022.
During the last few months, multitudes of courageous heroines of all ages and backgrounds rose up in Iran, risking their lives, risking their personal safety, facing the risk of rape and gross sexual abuses and detention under inhumane and horrible conditions to demand their rights to be able to simply choose to wear the hijab or not. Although many of the social, economic, cultural, marital and other oppressive laws and practices in Iran are severely enforced today supported by their ideas that women are less than men, all the Iranian women are demanding is the simple right to choose to wear the hijab or not. The patience and fortitude that the Iranian women have shown over the last 43 years under great oppression and the courage that they have shown in the last few weeks literally in the face of possible death, beating and rape should be an example to all the women and girls throughout the world for many generations. If their life endangering, self sacrificing stand against oppression for their basic human rights today is not worthy of the Nobel Prize, I don’t know what can ever be.
Jane Addams, the American heroine won the Nobel Prize in 1931 for her wonderful work towards women’s rights in United States.
Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Prize in 1991 for her pro-democracy work in Myanmar.
Rigoberta Menchú won the Nobel Prize in 1992 for her advocacy work of Mayan rights and culture.
Nadia Murad, Yazidi activist from northern Iraq who escaped enslavement by theIslamic State and led campaign against sexualviolence as a weapon of war won the Nobel Prize in 2018.
The heroines in Iran in 2022, together risking their safety and their very lives, have courageously stood up for women’s rights, have collectively raised their voices for democracy, have fearlessly arisen for their national rights and culture, and have selflessly stood against the use of sexual violence as a weapon by oppressor for themselves, for their countrymen and most importantly for future generations of Iranian women so they are not born into a society systematically designed to oppress women.
Today, there is no more fitting and deserving recipient for the Nobel Prize and we humbly request that the Iranian women in Iran collectively be considered to be honored for their sacrifices and for their fearless actions.
