In a fitting tribute to Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman killed in September 2022 by the so-called ‘Morality Police’ for not covering her hair properly, the European Parliament has posthumously awarded her the Sakharov Prize for Freedom. President Roberta Metsola announced the award at a special ceremony in Strasbourg on 12 December. The Sakharov Prize, named after the Russian nuclear scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, was also awarded to the Women, Life, Freedom Movement in Iran. Mahsa Amini joins a notable list of previous winners of the award, including Nobel peace prize laureates such as Nelson Mandela and Malala Yousafzai.
Amini’s mother, father and brother were refused permission to attend the ceremony in France and had their passports confiscated by the Iranian authorities. However, the family’s lawyer, Saleh Nikbakht, read out a speech by Amini’s mother in which she said her daughter’s name had “become a secret code for freedom and spread the dream of liberty from her birthplace, Kurdistan, all over Iran, the Middle East and the world”. In her address to the full plenary session of the European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said: “Let me say that the courage and resilience of Iranian women in their fight for justice, liberty and human rights will not be stopped. Their voices cannot be silenced and while they are not here today,........