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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