The announcement was made by the president of the Iranian federation. The stands of the men’s football championship have so far been forbidden to women.
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The Middle Ages are never far away for the religious people who make decisions in Iran. The Iranian women will be able to follow the men’s football championship, after more than 40 years of prohibition on the pretext that these matches were not good for them. Until then, the mullahs in power supported this strange theory which says that women must avoid being in a masculine atmosphere and seeing men in sportswear, wearing shorts. These same monks however organize the hanging in public for those whom they consider as criminals. Saturday, July 8 again, two men were hanged in the public square for all to see.
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This announcement to allow women in the stands, made by the president of the Iranian football federation, could apply in several cities of the country, but not necessarily in Tehran. The women had already been authorized to attend a match of the championship in August 2022. But we especially remember this match in October 2019, when 4,000 Iranian women were able to attend Iran’s qualifying match for the World Cup of 2022 against Cambodia in Tehran.
A very relative openness
In 2019, the young Sahar set herself on fire in front of a court in the capital, for fear of being imprisoned for wanting to attend a match. She had tried to enter a stadium pretending to be a boy.
This opening gives the feeling that the lesson of what happened with the riots of recent months has been heard, but the reality is quite different. In a fact-finding mission on July 5, the UN recalled that repression persists in Iran, that heavy sentences continue to be inflicted on those who were involved in the demonstrations. Proof of this is the recent six-year prison sentence handed down to rapper Toomaj Salehi, a symbol of the revolt.
Pardoned demonstrators are, for their part, obliged to express remorse and admit their guilt by signing written undertakings. In this context, the authorization for women to attend football matches is not essential. In any case, it does not fool many people.