Nargis Mohammadi, the Iranian activist who was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize 2023, started hunger strike to protest the lack of medical care for prisoners in Iranian prisons and the requirement for female prisoners to wear headscarves, her family announced.

“Nargis Mohammadi informed her family that he started a hunger strike a few hours ago. We are worried about her health,” her family said in a statement.

Last week, Nargis Mohammadi’s family alleged that Iran’s prison authorities were preventing her from being taken to hospital because she refused to cover her head.

The family clarified via Instagram that a week ago “the director of the prison announced that, in accordance with orders from above, it is forbidden to send her to a cardiac hospital without a headscarf, and her transfer was canceled for the second time.”

A medical team then arrived at the women’s wing of Evin prison in Tehran to examine Nargis Mohammadi and performed an ultrasound of her heart after “prison authorities refused to transfer Nargis to the infirmary” without a headscarf, her family alleged, according to the which, the cardiac and pulmonary problems he faces need urgent medical attention. “She is ready to risk her life by refusing to forcibly wear the hijab, even to receive medical attention.”

The committee awarded the 51-year-old journalist and activist with the Nobel Peace Prize for “her struggle against the oppression of women in Iran and for the promotion of human rights and freedom for all.”

Nargis Mohammadi has been arrested 13 times and sentenced 5 times for a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes. He was re-imprisoned in 2021 and is one of the key figures of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising.

Iranian women have thrown in their headscarves, cut their hair and demonstrated in the streets in the uprising sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was arrested in Tehran by morality police for violating the dress code imposed on Iranian women.

In a message from prison to express her gratitude for the Nobel Peace Prize and read by her daughter, Nargis Mohammadi called the compulsory hijab “a key source of control and oppression in society aimed at maintaining and perpetuating an authoritarian religious government”.