Mohammadi will go on hunger strike “in solidarity” with Iran’s Baha’i religious minority while her prize is awarded in Norway.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, currently imprisoned in Iran for her advocacy for women’s rights, will begin a new hunger strike in prison as her prize is awarded in Norway, her family says.

At a press conference on Saturday in Oslo, Mohammadi’s husband Taghi Rahmani, her twin children Ali and Kiana Rahmani and her brother, who are representing the veterans’ rights activist at Sunday’s awards ceremony, said the new strike was intended to show solidarity with their Baha’i religious minority in Iran.

“She is not with us today, she is in prison and will go on a hunger strike in solidarity with a religious minority, but we feel her presence here,” her younger brother Hamidreza Mohammadi said in a brief opening statement.

Mohammadi, 51, was awarded the Nobel Prize in October “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran.” She is the 19th woman to win the 11 million Swedish crowns (about $1 million) prize and the fifth person to win it while in prison.

“On International Human Rights Day, December 10, I will also be going on hunger strike to protest against human rights violations in Iran and in solidarity with the hunger strike of Baha’i prisoners in Evin Prison,” one post said on Mohammadi’s Instagram account.

Mohammadi is currently being held in Evin Prison in Tehran, where she went another hunger strike According to her family, she protested last month against restrictions on medical care for her and other inmates, as well as the requirement for women to wear hijabs in Iran.

In a letter smuggled from prison and published by Swedish public broadcaster SVT on Monday, Mohammadi said she would continue the strike even if it resulted in her death.

“Imprisonment, psychological torture, constant solitary confinement, sentence after sentence; “It hasn’t stopped me and it won’t,” she wrote, according to SVT.

“I will stand up for freedom and equality even if it costs me my life,” she said, adding that she misses her children most.

In a strong statement of support for Mohammadi, Norwegian Nobel Committee chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen said the body was “deeply concerned” about the 2023 laureate’s health.

Mohammadi was first arrested 22 years ago and has spent much of the last two decades in and out of prison advocating for human rights in Iran. She has been incarcerated since November 2021 and has not seen her children, who now live in France, for eight years.

At the press conference in Oslo, Kiana, who last saw her mother eight years ago, said: “When it comes to seeing her again, I personally am very pessimistic.”

“Maybe in 30 or 40 years I’ll see her again, but I don’t think I’ll see her again,” she said through a translator at a news conference. “But that doesn’t matter because my mother will always live on in my heart and with my family.”

Mohammadi’s Nobel Prize came amid months of protests across Iran sparked by Mohammadi’s death in custody in September 2022 Mahsa Amini22, who was arrested for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code for women.

Both Ali and Kiana will receive Mohammadi’s diploma and gold medal at Oslo City Hall and will deliver the Nobel Prize Lecture on Sunday on behalf of their mother.