The family of Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, who is being held in jail, claims that she has broken her fast after receiving medical attention without having to cover her head.
The activist’s family stated in a posting on her Instagram account on Thursday that she was taken to the hospital on Wednesday for examinations. She has respiratory and cardiac issues.

“After being transferred to the hospital without wearing the compulsory hijab and returning to the women’s ward, I ended my hunger strike,” she was quoted as saying in the statement.

Mohammadi, a 51-year-old veteran rights campaigner who is being imprisoned in Tehran’s Evin jail, won the Nobel Prize in October “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran”.

According to her relatives, Mohammadi started a hunger strike on Monday to express her displeasure about restrictions placed on her and the other prisoners’ access to medical treatment and the Islamic republic’s law requiring women to cover their heads in public.

Her supporters alleged on Thursday that Mohammadi’s friends and allies who had gathered to see her in the hospital were “threatened and harassed by Islamic Republic Security forces.”

Under no circumstances will Mohammedi wear the hijab, a head covering that has been required for women in public areas since soon after the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979.

She resolved to stick to her refusal to cover up.

“Until the abolition of the ‘forced hijab,’ I will continue to walk like this on the streets, and you will tremble at the sight of us women without the ‘forced hijab,'” she was quoted as saying.

Since her initial detention 22 years ago, Mohammadi has been in and out of jail for the majority of the last 20 years due to her advocacy for human rights in Iran.

Her most recent incarceration began in November 2021, and it has been eight years since she last saw her children, who are currently living in France.
Mahsa Amini, 22, who had been detained for reportedly disobeying the Islamic republic’s severe clothing codes for women, died in detention in September 2022. This event precipitated months of nationwide demonstrations that culminated in Mohammadi’s Nobel Prize.