Earlier this month, after months of strangling life in Cuba by blockading fuel supplies, the Trump administration moved to indict the 94-year-old former President Raul Castro Ruz over the 1996 shootdown of two civilian aircraft over the Florida Straits. Mr. Castro was then the Defence Minister of Cuba. The then President and Raul’s brother, Fidel Castro, had publicly taken responsibility for the attack, which killed four, in what Havana said was its own airspace.

While sections of the U.S. media invariably describe the shootdown of the ‘Brothers to the Rescue’ — the group that flew the aircraft towards Cuba — as an unprovoked murder, records show the group indulged in significant provocation. Its founder, Jose Basulto, a Cuban emigre and veteran of the failed, covert U.S.-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, told The Atlantic he had been “trained as a terrorist” by the U.S. The ‘Brothers’ had repeatedly flown into Cuban airspace to drop anti-government leaflets, seeking what Basulto described as “confrontation”. Cuba had warned the U.S. authorities; on the day of the shootdown, Cuban air controllers warned the pilots off, and Basulto replied: “We are ready to do it. It is our right as free Cubans.”

The immediate outcome was a tightening of the U.S. embargo — in place since 1962 and what Havana has always termed an economic blockade — most notably through the Helms-Burton Act passed barely three weeks after the shootdown. But it is for this 30-year-old incident that Raul Castro is being charged, in a replay of the farcical accusations that led to the U.S.’s abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro early this year.

Why has a frail 94-year-old, by many accounts weak of hearing and slow of speech, found himself in the crosshairs of a Trump administration once again? It is worth knowing the biography of a remarkable revolutionary long overshadowed by his charismatic elder brother, Fidel.

Raul Castro was born in Biran, eastern Cuba, in 1931 — the youngest of three brothers, whose landowning father sent them to school together. Fidel, in My Life, tells the journalist Ignacio Ramonet that he practically raised Raul during their school years. But Raul’s politics were his own. As a law student at Havana University, he joined the youth wing of the Popular Socialist Party (PSP) — Cuba’s main communist party at the time — and travelled to a Soviet-organised youth congress in Vienna in 1953.

‘Rank-and-file combatant’

When Fidel, along with other Orthodox Party (left nationalists) members, laid out the plan to attack the Moncada barracks as a first step to overthrow the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship, Raul signed on — a step that put him at odds with the PSP, which had condemned what proved a failed assault. Raul went in as a “rank-and-file combatant” (in Fidel’s words). When the assault collapsed, and his unit was cornered, Raul managed to turn the surrounding soldiers themselves into his prisoners, saving his men from torture and execution. He was eventually caught and imprisoned with Fidel on the Isle of Pines. On release, the brothers left for Mexico, where Raul first met the Argentine doctor Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, whom he introduced to Fidel.

Along with Che and an 80-strong rebel force, Fidel boarded the yacht Granma to launch a guerrilla-style insurrection in December 1956, only to be attacked by Batista’s troops three days after landing and reduced to a handful of survivors. Two weeks later, Raul caught up with his brother’s group in the Sierra Maestra, carrying five rifles to add to Fidel’s two — prompting Fidel’s famous declaration, “Now we can win this war”.

Out of that nucleus, the rebels slowly built columns and bases across eastern Cuba. By March 1958, Raul was given his own command — the Second Eastern Front ‘Frank Pais’, in the mountains north of Santiago. At just 26, he ran not only a military front but a rudimentary state apparatus. When his front came under aerial attack, he retaliated by kidnapping U.S. citizens working in the area — drawing international attention and forcing a halt to the air raids. Fidel would later call Raul’s Second Front “strategic” to the war’s outcome.

When the Revolution triumphed in January 1959, Raul became Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, a post he would hold for 49 years in what became the communist government in Cuba. He is credited with building a state from a guerrilla army — purging the Batista officer corps, raising the National Revolutionary Militias and building Cuba’s defence forces. He helped lead the defence at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and was sent to Moscow during the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis with a hand-written military agreement that was accepted by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Through the 1970s and 1980s, Raul oversaw what became Cuba’s largest overseas deployment — internationalist forces to Angola in support of the MPLA government of Agostinho Neto against South African intervention. The 15-year engagement ultimately forced Pretoria to the negotiating table and helped accelerate the end of apartheid in southern Africa — a contribution acknowledged by none other than Nelson Mandela.

If the 1980s were a test of Raul’s military thinking, the 1990s challenged his organisational skills on a far larger scale. Following the collapse of Cuba’s main economic benefactor, the USSR, he played a key role in addressing the resulting crisis. He turned the FAR into an economic institution, declaring that “beans are worth more than cannons”, and put it to work in agriculture. Out of these reforms grew the military’s commercial conglomerate Grupo de Administracion Empresarial S.A. (GAESA), which over the last two decades has become a behemoth controlling vast tracts of the Cuban economy. Critics charge it has grown without sufficient accountability while Cuba’s sympathisers credit it with holding the country together through the long siege of the U.S. embargo.

Short-lived thaw

Today, GAESA has been explicitly targeted by the Trump administration — yet another turn in U.S.-Cuba relations, which had briefly thawed before Mr. Trump first came to power.

That thaw came under Raul’s presidency, which began formally in 2008 after he had already taken the reins in 2006 when Fidel fell ill. Even earlier, as Defence Minister, Raul had quietly opened back channels to the U.S. through anti-narcotics and anti-migration cooperation. As President, a role he continued after Fidel’s death, he legalised private enterprise, took down the controversial dual currency system, and kept his promise to step down after two terms.

Under President Barack Obama’s second term, Raul worked towards the thaw leading to the announcement of December 17, 2014, when the two leaders simultaneously declared the restoration of full diplomatic ties after more than five decades of estrangement. The embargo remained in place, but restrictions on travel and remittances were eased. The opening proved short-lived. Under the first Trump administration, much of it was rolled back, the embargo tightened, and Cuba redesignated a “state sponsor of terrorism”, despite being a victim of terror acts committed with overt and covert U.S. help.

Today, with the January 2026 executive order branding Cuba “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security, the fuel blockade choking daily life, the Pentagon reportedly drafting plans for military action, and now an indictment against Raul, all indications point to a naked attempt to bring down by force a state that the U.S. has long sought to upend through other means.

Cubans have marked the indictment with rallies in Havana in solidarity with their veteran revolutionary leader, who, despite being long dismissed by detractors as merely Fidel’s brother, remains a deputy of the National Assembly and a defining figure of the Cuban state following the 1959 Revolution.

Published – May 24, 2026 01:08 am IST

General view of Saudi Aramco’s Ras Tanura oil refinery and oil terminal in Saudi Arabia.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

At a ceremony in Davos, Switzerland, on January 22, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, a new intergovernmental organisation was formally established. The Board of Peace, proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump and endorsed by the UN Security Council in November 2025, is envisaged as part of broader global efforts to rebuild war-torn Gaza.

Editorial | ​A piece of board: On India and Donald Trump’s Board of Peace

Mr. Trump announced the board in September 2025 as part of the second phase of a 20-point peace plan to reconstruct Gaza. This phase envisages the “demilitarisation, technocratic governance, and reconstruction” of the Gaza Strip. The board is expected to oversee the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, headed by Ali Shaath, a U.S.-friendly technocrat who was formerly a deputy minister in the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.

According to a draft of the board’s charter, it “will be tasked with promoting peace around the world and working to resolve conflicts” and engage in “peace-building functions in accordance with international law”. Notably, the charter, which is 11 pages long, and comprises eight chapters and 13 articles, does not expressly mention Gaza, and later comments from Mr. Trump also indicated a potential expansion of its mandate to other conflicts.

Mr. Trump will be the inaugural chairman of the board, while the members of the founding executive board are former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Apollo CEO Marc Rowan, World Bank President Ajay Banga, and security advisor Robert Gabriel.

The White House has stated that each member will “oversee a defined portfolio critical to Gaza’s stabilisation and long-term success,” including governance capacity-building, regional relations, reconstruction, investment attraction, large-scale funding, and capital mobilisation.

Editorial | Peace mirage: On Trump’s ‘peace plan’ for Gaza

At least 50 countries and private entities have been invited to join the board. While 20 representatives were present at the signing ceremony in Davos, others are still mulling over the invite. Membership of the Board will be for three years, while those countries which donate $1 billion within the first year can become permanent members.

Invitation for India

France, Sweden, Norway and Slovenia have declined invites to join the board. India was invited but is yet to make a decision. China and Russia have been invited as well. Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked that Russia’s membership costs be drawn from the funds frozen by former President Joe Biden since the start of its war with Ukraine. Among those who have joined the board are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Egypt, Morocco and Turkiye.

While Germany has expressed reservations, European nations such as Kosovo, Belarus, Hungary, and Bulgaria have signed on. From the rest of Asia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Vietnam, Indonesia and Mongolia have signed. South American nations Paraguay and Argentina have also joined. Israel is expected to join, although no representative was present at the Davos ceremony. Reports note that Israel may not be pleased with Turkish and Qatari representation on the board.

Canada said it has agreed to join in principle, but on January 22, Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post that he was withdrawing the invitation for Canada amid growing rift with Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Other invitees like Singapore, Croatia, Ukraine and the European Union’s executive arm remain unsure, while the U.K. has expressed reservations about the invitation to Mr. Putin. Spanish media have noted that Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is reviewing the invitation, and Irish Foreign Minister Helen McEntee echoed similar sentiments.

The charter makes no reference to a path to a Palestinian State, and no mention of this was made during the signing ceremony either.

Mohammed Mustafa, the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, told the media on the sidelines of a WEF event that they wanted to work with the Board of Peace, with the executive board and with the committee, to ensure that “they do their part of things”.

Meanwhile, Palestine’s Foreign Minister Varsen Aghabekian Shahin stated in a recent meeting that “any transitional institutional framework or body must not serve as a substitute for the UN.”

In November, the UN Security Council approved a U.S backed resolution for the Board of Peace to operate, but only till 2027 and with Gaza as the sole focus. Notably, Russia and China abstained, saying the resolution had not outlined a clear role for the UN in the rebuilding efforts.

Several nations have expressed concerns that the board will overshadow the UN. Mr. Trump has criticised the UN and, earlier in January, signed a memo directing the withdrawal of the U.S. from 66 international organisations, including 31 UN bodies. In earlier comments, he signalled that the Board may replace the UN, but later toned down his remarks. “Once this board is completely formed, we can do pretty much whatever we want to do. And we’ll do it in conjunction with the United Nations,” he said.

‘Beautiful piece of property’

At the signing event, Mr. Trump said he was honoured to be the chairman of what could become “one of the most consequential bodies ever created”. He asserted that the Israel-Hamas war was really coming to an end, and warned Hamas to disarm, saying that if they did not, “it’s going to be the end of them”. Calling Gaza “a beautiful piece of property,” Mr. Trump said he was a “real estate person at heart”, adding that “people that are living so poorly are going to be so well.”

The ceremony also saw Jared Kushner, member of the board’s executive, unveiling plans to redevelop the region, complete with a plan for a “New Gaza”, coastal tourism and industrial zones, high-rise buildings, new roads, public services and thousands of new jobs. He stated that there was no “Plan B” for the redevelopment of Gaza, besides engaging in a multi-stage process to end the war and rebuilding the region.

The “number one thing is going to be security — obviously we’re working very closely with the Israelis to figure out a way to de-escalation, and the next phase is working with Hamas on demilitarisation,” he said.

Published – January 25, 2026 01:24 am IST

On July 17, 2024, Peter Kent Navarro walked out of a federal prison in Miami, and a few hours later, emerged on the stage of the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee in Wisconsin. “I went to prison so that you do not have to,” he told the believers of MAGA [Make America Great Again] flag who were moved to tears by the end of his 12-minute speech.

“Fight, fight, fight,” they chanted as he warned them of the dangers posed in the event of a defeat of Donald J. Trump, who was running for a second term in the White House.

Mr. Trump would return to the White House, and so would Mr. Navarro. As the Senior Counsellor for Trade and Manufacturing for the President, Mr. Navarro has the ear of arguably the most powerful man on the planet. If Stephen Miller, as Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House, is the key mover of all immigration and deportation decisions of the Trump administration, Mr. Navarro guides the course of its trade and economic policies. As it happens, he is paying too much attention to India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and in the process, is subjecting India-U.S. bilateral ties to an unprecedented stress test.

Mr. Navarro’s second coming, as is that of his boss, is stronger than their respective first terms. In the first Trump administration, Mr. Navarro had worked as director of the White House National Trade Council and later the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. When other experts in the room warned of the dangers of a trade war, Mr. Trump would reportedly wonder, “Where is Peter.”

Mr. Navarro would offer an opinion that the President and his MAGA crowd would love to hear. That loyalty would extend to a willingness to go to jail in the service of the boss and the cause. When the Democrat-controlled Congress subpoenaed him for documents and testimony regarding the January 6, 2021, violence on Capitol Hill, Mr. Navarro ignored it. That earned him the charge of contempt of Congress and a jail term of four months.

“We need to be in control of all three branches of the government — the legislature, the executive and the judiciary,” Mr. Navarro explained at the RNC Convention. A few days later, he cited Apostle Matthew to explain his incarceration: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” But heaven could wait, he said, as there were earthly things to sort out.

Apocalypse had already come, Mr. Navarro believed, with the entry of China into the WTO, and Mr. Trump was the saviour long needed. His near-total focus in the years ahead of Mr. Trump’s MAGA movement was the alleged destruction of America being caused by China’s trade. He is the author of 16 books. In Death by China: Confronting the Dragon – A Global Call to Action, he blamed China for most of what was problematic in the U.S. Though his arguments about trade and deficit have been contested by most mainstream economists, Mr. Navarro made sense for the distressed people who were struggling to understand their situation and make a political choice.

Views on trade deficit

The core of his trade policy views hinges on a questionable assumption that all trade deficits are inherently and always bad for the country, and a trade deficit with another country is the outcome of trade barriers put up by the partner.

His detractors have wondered how this could be true as American deficits grew when global barriers came down in recent decades. Mr. Navarro also works on the assumption that services exports are inferior and inadequate in comparison with goods exports for America. Too few economists agreed with him, and hence he invented an economist — Ron Vora —who appears in five of his books, supporting his arguments. Mr. Navarro later claimed it was merely a writing device.

Mr. Navarro is a late convert to the MAGA tent. From 1994 to 2016, he was a Democrat, globalist, pro-trade, pro-choice and critical of the religious right. Born on July 15, 1949, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he did his PhD in economics from Harvard University and went on to become a professor emeritus at the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine. Early in his career, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand from 1973 to 1976. In San Diego, he ran for public office five times, and failed all five.

“The biggest losers in the protectionist game are consumers,” he declared in a book in 1984, making a case of open trade. He interacted with the Clinton and Obama administrations as an adviser in an informal capacity, and as a speaker at the Democratic National Convention in 1996 — he was a Congressional candidate that year — pledged his loyalty to President Bill Clinton and vowed to support Medicare, social security and pro-choice policies.

Though mainstream economists disapprove of his theories about the economy and trade, the Joe Biden administration also bought into his anti-China talking points, an indicator of the salience of these arguments in U.S. politics. Also, the clamour for reshoring and friendshoring of manufacturing sounded more reasonable against the backdrop of the COVID pandemic.

Mr. Navarro conjures up a glorious past of the American economy and attributes it to the country’s goods manufacturing sectors, which apparently existed in the golden old days. If Mr. Miller’s arguments and policy centre around cultural, demographic challenges in the U.S., Mr. Navarro articulates the economic worldview of the MAGA nation in the U.S.

In recent days, Mr. Navarro’s ire is directed at an unlikely target: India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He has repeatedly accused India of serving as an “oil money laundromat for the Kremlin”, hinted at “Indian profiteers” benefiting from Russian oil purchases, referred to the Russia-Ukraine conflict as “Modi’s war”, and even argued that the “road to peace runs at least partly right through New Delhi”.

‘Strategic freeloading’

He said India’s foreign policy was “strategic freeloading” and accused it of “getting in bed with authoritarians” such as Russia and China. Mr. Navarro posted an image of Mr. Modi meditating in a saffron robe, which was found offensive by many who thought it was an attempt to insult Hindu faith itself. “A 50% tariff —25% for unfair trade and 25% for national security — is a direct response,” he wrote in the post. “If India, the world’s largest democracy, wants to be treated like a strategic partner of the U.S., it needs to act like one.”

The road to peace in Ukraine runs through New Delhi, claimed Mr. Navarro.

Since there is no publicly known reason for this misplaced antagonism towards India, one can only make some assumptions. For one, Mr. Navarro’s anti-China arguments have suddenly lost steam as his boss began accommodating Beijing and is looking for a deal with it. With Russia, even at the cost of displeasing European countries, Mr. Trump is looking for a new era of peace.

All this leaves India as the wrong tree to bark up at.

Published – August 31, 2025 01:33 am IST

The new Danish Royal Coat of Arms, right, is seen next to the one established in 1972, seen at left.
| Photo Credit: AP

On January 1, the King of Denmark unveiled a new coat of arms after more than 50 years. It features the polar bear and the ram (symbolising Greenland and the Faroe Islands, respectively) more prominently than before. Amid calls for independence in Greenland and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s aggressive push to buy/annex the island, the Royal House seems to be underscoring the Danish realm’s unity.

Greenland, the world’s largest island with a population of 57,000, is an autonomous territory controlled by Denmark. This effectively means that while it has a Parliament which deals with domestic affairs such as business taxes, immigration, and mining, most of its foreign, monetary and military policy are dictated by Denmark. The Arctic island was colonised by the Danes in the 18th century and has been associated with Europe, though geographically it is part of the North American continent and closer to the U.S. than Copenhagen.

During the Second World War, the U.S. briefly occupied the region and defended it when Denmark was under siege by Nazi Germany.

Noting the region’s geopolitical importance, the U.S. in 1946, after the War, had offered to buy it from Denmark. Denmark rejected the offer and ever since Greenland has been a part of the Danish realm with home rule granted to the island in 1979. The U.S. runs and operates an air base on the island. However, of late, calls for complete independence from Denmark have been rising in the island especially after the contraceptive scandal between the 1960s and 1990s came to light, where almost 4,500 Inuit women (the indigenous people of Greenland) were forced to wear a contraceptive coil without their consent. Greenland’s Prime Minister Múte Egede in his New Year address talked about taking the “next step” and removing the “shackles of colonialism”.

U.S. aspirations

In his first term in office, Mr. Trump had floated the idea of buying Greenland. However, this time it seems the President-elect is serious. “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” he in December. Following such a declaration, Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Trump’s son, visited Greenland this year as a “private individual”. Both Greenland and Danish Prime Ministers have shut down such threats and plans. Mr. Egede has categorically stated that “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders”.

Mr. Trump seems unfazed. Speaking to the press last week, Mr. Trump underlined the importance of the island for U.S security and said he won’t rule out military or economic coercion to annex/buy the island.

The island is surrounded by the Atlantic on one side and the Arctic waters on the other. Due to climate change and global warming, glaciers and ice sheets in the Arctic Sea are melting, leading to potentially new shipping routes, which could greatly enhance trade. Moreover, Russia and China have already agreed to develop new trading routes in the Arctic waters as relations with the West sour and tensions in West Asia loom large.

Last November, both countries developed a subcommittee for cooperation on the northern sea route, which spans 5,600 km from the Barents Sea near Scandinavia to the Bering Strait near Alaska. With the threat of Russia-China cooperation in the region, annexing Greenland could give the U.S. significant control over the area, letting it decide who gets to run and operate in these strategic waters.

The island is also rich in minerals. As per a 2025 survey, 25 of 34 critical raw materials, which are used in EVs and batteries, were found in Greenland. The melting of almost 28,000 square km of Greenland’s ice sheets makes drilling for oil, gas and other critical raw materials easier. Currently, China is the world’s largest exporter and producer of critical minerals. Buying Greenland could make the U.S. compete with China for that status. However, Greenland has not given out certain mining leases since 2021 fearing the possible environmental and ecological harms to the region.

Mr. Trump has also issued calls to buy/annex the Panama Canal and Canada. While all of them have been touted as necessary for the U.S.’s economic and national security, the U.S. is breaking the first and fundamental rule of the UN Charter: recognising the sovereignty of nations. With respect to Greenland, the U.S. is going against the NATO agreement as well.

Similarly, the Arctic waters are a global common under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The incoming U.S. President’s policies are bringing to the forefront the true anarchical nature of international politics.

Her cell in the women’s ward of Tehran’s Evin prison has a window that opens to a view of the Alborz mountains. The mountain range that stretches from the border of Azerbaijan and merges into the heights of Khorasan has acted as a natural barrier and protector of Tehran for centuries. From the window, she could see the wild flowers on the hills and the snow-clad peaks of the mountains. “I sit in front of the window every day, stare at the greenery and dream of a free Iran,” Narges Mohammadi said in an interview in June this year. Evin, built by the Shah and opened in 1972, is one of the most notorious prisons in Iran which is estimated to be holding one-quarter of the country’s political prisoners. With its torture and solitary confinement cells, Evin could break even the toughest and most resolute minds. In the words of Kian Tajbakhsh, an Iranian-American scholar who himself was a prisoner, “Evin is Iran’s Bastille”.

Lengthy prison terms took a toll on Ms. Mohammadi’s mental and physical health, but her resolve to continue to fight for what she believes in stayed intact. When Iran erupted into street protests last year after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, allegedly at the hands of the country’s morality police who arrested her for violating the mandatory hijab rules, Ms. Mohammadi’s life and struggles came into focus again. She organised protests inside the walls of the prison. She continued to speak through her Instagram page and written interviews in defence of women’s rights. In September this year, she said the cycles of protests in Iran showed that change was “irreversible”. On October 6, the Norwegian Nobel Committee recognised her relentless struggle by awarding her the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize. Ms. Mohammadi “has dedicated her life to fighting against the oppression of women in Iran and promoting human rights and freedom for all”, said the Committee.

Revolutionary fervour

Born in 1972 in Zanjan, some 270 km northwest of Tehran, Narges Mohammadi grew up in the Shah’s Iran that was gripped by revolutionary fervour. The 1979 revolution, which overthrew the Shah’s monarchy and turned Iran into an Islamic Republic, was a watershed moment in the country’s history. The Shah’s regime was highly oppressive and resentful, run by his notorious security police SAVAK and oligarchs, but had tolerated limited social liberties, especially for women. While it’s popularly called the “Islamic revolution”, the anti-Shah popular movement was not just Islamic. Iranians from different political sections, including nationalists, liberals, leftists and trade unionists, had actively joined the movement, seeking freedom from the Shah’s royal dictatorship. When the Shah fled the country in January 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini was in Paris. He landed in Tehran’s Mehrabad airport, which was controlled by the revolutionaries, on February 1, 1979. Khomeini ushered in a new system that would have an elected President and Parliament, while the clerics would remain firmly in control. He promised an Islamic revolutionary government based on Sharia, a model which he called Vilayat-e Faqih (Guardianship of the Faqih, or the Islamic Jurist).

While the revolutionary regime, which promised economic justice and a new spiritual path forward amassed support in the countryside, the liberal and left-leaning sections of Iranian society were agitated by the turn their country was taking. The new regime lost no time in cracking down on dissent. Among those arrested were an activist uncle and two cousins of Ms. Mohammadi. So she did not need to be introduced into activism.

Also read: 2023 Nobel Peace Prize: Narges Mohammadi | The Iranian activist who continues to fight from behind the bars

After finishing high school in Zanjan, she joined the Imam Khomeini University in Qazvin for a major in applied physics. There, Ms. Mohammadi co-founded an organisation called Tashakkol Daaneshjooei Roshangaraan (Illuminating Students Group) and started taking up women’s issues and a campaign against the death penalty. It was in the university she met Tagh Rahmani, another activist, and journalist who she would marry in 1999.

After college, she started writing for a women’s magazine, Payaam-e Haajar. It was published by Azam Alaei Taleghani, daughter of Ayatollah Seyyed Mahmoud Alaei Taleghani, a progressive cleric and a supporter of Mohammad Mosaddegh, the leftwing Iranian Prime Minister ousted by a CIA-engineered coup in 1953. The magazine was shut down in 2000.

As a journalist, Ms. Mohammadi wrote about women’s issues and reformist causes. After her husband, Mr. Rehmani, was arrested in 2001 for a political gathering, she became more involved in rights campaigns and civil society movements. A year later, she joined the Centre for the Defenders of Human Rights that was co-founded by Shirin Ebadi, the renowned human rights campaigner who won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize. Ms. Mohammadi would soon become the head of the Centre’s Committee on Women’s Rights and represent Ms. Ebadi in foreign conferences. She was also one of the founding members of the National Council for Peace, which was established in 2007, amid fears of a U.S. invasion of Iran, and advocated for peace and campaigned against war.

Her quick rise as a human rights activist earned her the wrath of the regime, which has always looked at liberal campaigners with suspicion. In 2009, the authorities confiscated her passport, potentially banning her from travelling abroad. (Her husband left the country in 2011 and has been living in exile in France ever since. Their twins joined him in 2015.) In 2010, she was arrested for her work for the Centre for the Defenders of Human Rights. According to Mr. Rahmani, Ms. Mohammadi has since then been arrested 13 times, sentenced to a total of 31 years and 154 lashes. In 2011, she was convicted “of acting against national security” and spreading propaganda against the state.

According to PEN America, Ms. Mohammadi “suffers from a neurological disorder that can result in seizures, temporary partial paralysis, and pulmonary embolism — a blood clot in her lung”. In 2014, she was released due to ill health, but outside jail, she drew the world’s attention to the conditions of Evin prison — her 2022 book White Torture, based on interviews with 12 female inmates, gives extensive details about the inhuman conditions of the prison. She herself was kept in solitary confinement and tortured, according to her account. In 2015, she was arrested again and sentenced to another 16 years. She was released a few times due to ill health ever since, but was immediately rearrested.

International recognition

But jail did not break her. Her commitment and resolution earned her several international awards. She is the recipient of both the Alexander Langer Award (2009), the Per Anger Prize (2011), and the 2022 Reporters without Borders Prize for Courage for her human rights work. She also won the 2013 PEN/Oxfam Novib Free Expression Award and the Swedish Olof Palme prize for human rights (2023). And now, the Nobel Prize also reached her.

The Iranian regime, unsurprisingly, is not happy with the Nobel Committee’s decision. A report in the official Press TV noted that she was in jail for “colluding to act against national security, engaging in propaganda campaigns against the government as well as forming and directing an illegal group”. The Foreign Ministry described Ms. Mohammadi as someone who “committed criminal actions”. Kazem Gharibabadi, secretary of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, called the Nobel prize a “political reward”, which has “rather turned into a [means of] financial support for the illegal activities of some of its winners”.

The Nobel Peace Prize has hardly been free of controversies. The Committee has been accused, many a time, of awarding the Prize to critics of regimes that are seen as rivals by the West. But irrespective of the politics of the Nobel Prize, Narges Mohammadi is here to stay as a fearless voice of freedoms in the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran.