Saturday, August 20, 2016

Olympics: Iranian Women Won More than a Medal - August 19, 2016 NEWS

Huffington Post
August 19, 2016
Firuzeh Mahmoudi
Director, United for Iran


     In the same way that the 1968 Olympics has been remembered as a sign of the times — then the civil rights movement in the US, the Vietnam War, and South Africa’s Apartheid regime — the 2016 Olympics will be known for #BlackGirlMagic, Team Refugee, and for the brave Iranian women fighting for gender-equality and public access to sports.

     This year, Darya Safai, a Belgium-Iranian woman, joined that fabled Olympic tradition of protest and barrier breaking. At the Iran versus Egypt men’s volleyball match in Rio, Safai held a sign reading: “Let Iranian women enter their stadiums,” protesting the Iranian government’s refusal to grant women access to soccer and volleyball matches in Iran.
     Since 1979, Iranian women have been prohibited from attending football matches. That ban was extended to volleyball matches in 2012. What is worse, women who have protested this gender apartheid have been harassed, arrested and imprisoned. In 2014, the Islamic Republic made its opposition to the presence of women in these public spaces clear when it arrested Ghonche Ghavami, a British-Iranian activist who had protested for equal access to a men-only volleyball match at Iran’s Azadi Stadium. She was arrested attempting to enter the stadium, charged with “propaganda against the state” and sentenced to one year in prison. She was held in prison for five months.
     In Rio, Safai picked up Ghavami’s torch and helped shine a light on the Islamic Republic’s denial of fundamental human rights to women. By criminalizing women’s bodies and forbidding their attendance in men’s sporting events, the Iranian government is denying women access to public spaces.
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