Kimia Alizadeh, Iran’s 23-year-old “daughter-in-exile”, has achieved fourth place in the Tokyo Olympics in taekwondo as a refugee.
Five years ago in Rio, Alizadeh became the first Iranian woman to win a medal in the Olympic games. This time, not only was she not fighting under the Iranian flag, but she competed against – and defeated – her friend and her former teammate Nahid Kiani.
Alizadeh then defeated Britain’s Jade Jones, a two-time Olympic gold winner at the Rio and London games, and Chinese practitioner Zhou Lijun, a three-time winner at women’s international taekwondo competitions. But in the semifinals she lost to Tatiana Minina of the Russian Olympic Committee. She then lost the fight for bronze, 8-6, to Turkey’s Hatice Kübra İlgün, coming fourth overall.
When Kimia Alizadeh Left Iran
On January 20, just weeks after the killing of Ghassem Soleimani, the downing of Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752 by the Revolutionary Guards, and at a time when the streets of Iran still smelled of gunpowder and protesters’ blood, reports that Kimia Alizadeh had fled Iran and asked Germany for asylum climbed to the top of the news. The only Iranian female athlete to win an Olympic medal no longer wanted to flight fight under the Iranian flag.
Alizadeh initially gave her myriad reasons for the defection in an Instagram post. “I wore whatever they told me to,” she said. “I repeated whatever they told me to say. They sequestered me whenever they saw fit. They gave credit to compulsory hijab for my medals and praised their own management and wisdom.”
She went on to cite “discriminations” and “dirty money” as causes for her flight, adding that she no longer wanted to be part of a “system of suppression, corruption and lies.”
On January 24, 2020, the German Taekwondo Federation arranged a press conference for Alizadeh. The federation head opened the discussion by pointing out that this was nothing new – Germany had for decades welcomed athletes from abroad onto its national teams.
Alizadeh had previously competed while wearing a hijab, for which she had been praised by the Supreme Leader. She now spoke before the cameras unveiled, telling the reporters that she had taken this radical step so as to live a “peaceful” life while still competing as a martial artist at the Olympic level.
Censoring the Champion’s Name
The life Alizadeh wanted was out of step with the one that the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic had planned for Iranian female athletes.
On August 21, 2019, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had posted an image of Kimia Alizadeh on his Twitter page and written in English: "I wholeheartedly thank all [Iranian] women athletes who appear on the international scene with a veil."
Shortly after that, when the Iranian Olympic team returned to Tehran after engagements abroad, Khamenei again wrote: "To [Iranian] women athletes who took the honorable step of wearing the veil before others, and [particularly] to the brave lady who wore a full veil, I welcome home the pioneers of the nation’s sports, and coaches; I thank you all. We appreciate you."
Two sets of keywords were embedded in these posts; "Islamic veil,” repeated in both messages, and "We appreciate you.”
In the lexicon of the Islamic Republic, “appreciation” means financial reward. But it comes in exchange for a lifetime of adherence to the the Islamic Republic’s propaganda.
The fact that in neither missive did Khamenei mention Kimia Alizadeh, the first Iranian woman to win a medal in the Olympics, by name gives a clue as to the real status of women in the eyes of the Islamic Republic. He only praised her hijab – and, in his second message, said he “appreciated” the presence of an item of clothing that all Iranian female athletes are forced to wear.