Islamic Republic will fall, Iran's Nobel Peace laureate says
The Islamic Republic cannot be reformed and cannot offer democracy or freedom, Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi told the French weekly magazine Nouvel Obs.
The Islamic Republic cannot be reformed and cannot offer democracy or freedom, Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi told the French weekly magazine Nouvel Obs.
"People in Iran, based on historical experiences and decades of efforts now demand a transition from tyranny to democracy, meaning a shift away from the Islamic Republic," she said.
Mohammadi, who won the Nobel Prize in 2023, is currently on temporary leave from prison.
In her interview featured on the cover of a Nouvel Obs special edition on Iran, she described the government in Tehran as unaccountable and inefficient, asserting that its downfall is inescapable and what Iranians want.
"The transition from the Islamic Republic is aimed at creating a democratic and secular structure where human rights and women's rights are guaranteed, and civil society is realized and strengthened," she said.
Mohammadi, 52, has spent much of the past 20 years in and out of prison. She has been arrested, tried, and sentenced to prison multiple times because of her human rights work.
Last December Mohammadi was released from Tehran's Evin prison to receive medical care where she was serving a 13-year sentence.
She was awarded the Nobel peace prize for her three-decade campaign for women's rights in Iran.
A total of 108,138 people claimed asylum, marking an 18% increase from the previous year and surpassing a record set in 2002.
Iranian nationals ranked third in asylum claims in the UK in 2024 with 8,099 claims. Pakistan had the highest number of claims with 10,542, followed by Afghanistan with 8,508.
A further analysis of the data suggests a notable increase in asylum applications from Iranians, particularly in 2022, with the highest surge occurring in Q4 of that year, with 3,686 applications.
The spike likely may reflect growing migration pressures driven by the nationwide protests and state repression on demonstrations following the death in morality police custody of Mahsa Amini in September 2022.
The nationwide protest movement dubbed the Woman Life Freedom movement was met with increasingly violent government crackdowns, prompting many Iranians to seek asylum abroad.
During the protests, security forces killed at least 550 protesters, including children, and imprisoned over 20,000 people.
From Q1 2023 onwards, while there was some fluctuation but asylum applications remained relatively high at consistently above 1,500 per quarter for non-unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) and over 100 for UASC.
The continued upward trend through Q3 and Q4 of 2024 shows sustained asylum-seeking activity, though the surge in Q4 2022 remains the most significant increase in recent years.
However, despite the rise in applications, the number of decisions granting protection has not kept pace. Of 3,686 applications made by Iranians in Q2 2024, only 1,324 were granted protection.
The highest number of grants occurred in Q3 of 2023, when 4,647 Iranians were granted protection.
This disparity between grants of protection compared to applications suggests the lengthy immigration processing times are contributing to a backlog.
