Women barred from entering a football stadium in Iran
Women in Iran were barred from attending Iran’s final 2022 World Cup qualification match on Tuesday, according to the ISNA news agency. ISNA reported that 12,500 seats were sold online out of which 2,000 were for women.
Iran has a long history of oppression when it comes to women and has always been under question for violating human rights norms. There have been many protests in past for the same but reports show that nothing has actually changed there.
However, Iran already qualified for the 2022 Qatar FIFA World Cup when it defeated Iraq in January, in the match Iran defeated Lebanon by 2-0. The response of barring women from entering the stadium was also seen at Mashhad, where thousands of women football fans were on the roads chanting “we have an objection”Â
It is unclear who made the decision to prevent the women from attending the game. “Despite tickets being sold, women were still not allowed entry in the stadium,” according to Khabaronline, an Iranian news website. FIFA has been asking for a guarantee from Iran that women will be permitted to compete in World Cup qualifiers in 2022 for a long time now.
Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, women have been largely barred from attending men’s games and other sporting activities in Iran. Friday prayer leader in Mashhad Ahmad Alamolhoda, who was selected by the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stated he is always in opposition to women as spectators in sports played by men. He referred to their presence as “vulgarity.”Â
In a post-match interview, team captain Alireza Jahanbakhsh stated it would be nice to see more women in stadiums in the future because they enjoy watching the national team, known as “Team Melli,” win. More than 2,000 female fans were present at Azadi stadium in Tehran in January to watch the national team overcome Iraq 1-0 to become the first Asian group team to qualify for World Cup.
 It was the stadium’s second major soccer match in which Iranian women were present. For the first time in decades, hundreds of Iranian women were allowed to witness Persepolis face the Kashima Antlers of Japan in the Asian Champions League final in Tehran in 2019.
Edited by Subbuthai Padma
 Published by Iram Rizvi
