Kimia Alizadeh defects: Iranian Taekwondo Olympic gold medalist female rights takedown of ruling theology government oppressing women and human rights violations as domestic discord calls for change.
www Iran’s only female Olympic medalist has defected from the Islamic Republic in a blistering online rebuke against the reigning theology, describing herself as ‘one of the millions of oppressed women in Iran.’
Taekwondo champion Kimia Alizadeh, 21, who won a bronze medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics, attacked the ‘hypocrisy, lies, injustice and flattery’ of her homeland as she revealed she had moved to Europe.
‘I am one of the millions of oppressed women in Iran whom they’ve been playing for years,’ she wrote in an Instagram missive to her over 370,000 followers.
The scathing post called out Iranian officials, citing sexism and mistreatment of women.
‘I wore whatever they told me and repeated whatever they ordered. Every sentence they ordered I repeated,’ she wrote, angry at being ordered to wear the mandatory hijab headscarf.
‘They put my medals on the obligatory veil and attributed it to their management and tact,’ adding, ‘None of us matter for them, we are just tools.’
Defection is latest sport/athlete taking aim at government.
Alizadeh says she chose to instead live in Europe, with the semiofficial ISNA news agency reporting she had fled to the Netherlands.
‘No one has invited me to Europe and I haven’t been given a tempting offer,’ she wrote. ‘But I accept the pain and hardship of homesickness because I didn’t want to be part of hypocrisy, lies, injustice and flattery.’
ISNA suggested Alizadeh may try to compete under another nation’s flag at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
The defection comes as national discord amongst Iran’s youth intensifies as well as latest fallout between US and Iranian relations.
In recent years, many Iranian athletes have left their country, citing government pressure.
In September, Saeed Mollaei, an Iranian judoka, left the country for Germany, saying he was afraid to return to Iran after exposing and criticizing its pressure on him to deliberately lose in the World Championships to avoid a potential final meeting with an Israeli opponent.
Alireza Faghani, an Iranian international soccer referee, also left Iran and successfully migrated to Australia last year.
Alizadeh’s post came amid growing turmoil inside Iran as protesters demanded Saturday that the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, step down after the government said its military had by mistake shot down a Ukrainian plane Wednesday, killing all 176 people on board.
The incident happened shortly after Iran retaliated for a U.S. drone strike that killed of one of its top generals by firing a series of ballistic missiles at two Iraqi air bases housing U.S. forces.
Iranian authorities have not publicly responded to Alizadeh’s open letter as it continues fresh rounds against US bases in Iraq over the weekend.
