An Iranian woman who is serving a 12-year prison sentence for advocating for Iranian women’s rights has been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. An announcement was made on Friday that Narges Mohammadi was awarded with the prize for her activism against Tehran’s theocratic leaders and to boost anti-government protesters of the Islamic Republic.

The Nobel Peace Prize is seen by Iranian leadership as a rebuke to their power. The awards committee wanted to honor the recent demonstrations in Iran, as it called for the release of Mohammadi. She is 51-years-old and has campaigned for 30 years for women’s rights and the abolition of the death penalty.

“We hope to send the message to women all around the world that are living in conditions where they are systematically discriminated: ‘Have the courage, keep on going’,” Berit Reiss-Andersen, head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told Reuters.

“We want to give the prize to encourage Narges Mohammadi and the hundreds of thousands of people who have been crying for exactly ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ in Iran,” she added, referring to the protest movement’s main slogan.

Iranian leadership labels the protests as Western-led subversion. It is a timely rebuke to the Iranian leadership, given the Iranian connection to Hamas in Palestine and its attacks on Israel this weekend. I hope Ms. Mohammadi survives her time in prison.

The Iranian leadership calls the protests as and accuses the Nobel committee of meddling in the issue of human rights.

“The action of the Nobel Peace Committee is political move in line with the interventionist and anti-Iranian policies of some European governments,” Nasser Kanaani, a spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said.

“The Nobel Peace committee has awarded a prize to a person convicted of repeated law violations and criminal acts, and we condemn this as biased and politically motivated,” he added in the statement carried by state media.

Finally, Mohammadi issued a statement after the announcement of the prize.

Mohammadi was quoted by the New York Times as saying she would never stop striving for democracy and equality, even if that meant staying in prison.

“I will continue to fight against the relentless discrimination, tyranny and gender-based oppression by the oppressive religious government until the liberation of women,” the newspaper quoted her as saying in a statement, which it said was issued after the Nobel announcement.

She is serving multiple sentences in Tehran’s Evin Prison. It is not her first time in prison. She is deputy head of Human Rights Center, a NGO led by Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who lives in exile. “I congratulate Narges Mohammadi and all Iranian women for this prize,” Ebadi told Reuters. “This prize will shed light on violation of women’s rights in the Islamic Republic … which unfortunately has proven that it cannot be reformed.”

Her husband and brother expressed gratitude and joy about Mohammadi’s selection.

Mohammadi’s husband Taghi Rahmani applauded as he watched the announcement on TV at his home in Paris. “This Nobel Prize will embolden Narges’ fight for human rights, but more importantly, this is in fact a prize for the ‘woman, life and freedom’ movement,” he told Reuters.

Her brother, Hamidreza Mohammadi, said he was “overwhelmed” when watching the announcement and that the prize would strengthen the work of his sister and other activists.

She has been in Evin prison since 2012, unable to see her husband for 15 years and her children for seven years.