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Soccer. 3,500 Iranian women are expected at the stadium in Tehran for the Iran-Cambodia meeting

2019-10-10T11:19:55.523Z


It's a first ! For the qualifying match for the 2022 World Cup between Iran and Cambodia, 3,500 Iranian women are expected to attend the match on Thursday, a first in Iran for almost 40 years. This opening comes after the tragic death in September of a young woman, Sahar Khodayari.


It's a first ! For the qualifying match for the 2022 World Cup between Iran and Cambodia, 3,500 Iranian women are expected to attend the match on Thursday, a first in Iran for almost 40 years. This opening comes after the tragic death in September of a young woman, Sahar Khodayari.

Some 3,500 fans will attend Tehran Thursday at the World Cup-2022 qualifying match against Cambodia after they could buy their ticket for this meeting, a first in Iran for almost forty years.

This opening comes after the tragic death in September of a young woman, Sahar Khodayari, who burned herself after believing, according to the local press, that she was going to be sentenced to prison for trying to to enter a stadium. FIFA then increased its pressure on Iran, threatening the country with sanctions if it did not allow women to attend the men's football matches.

++ Football. Iranian woman dead after conviction for returning to stadium

Soon after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iranian women were denied access to the stadiums, ostensibly to protect them from male rudeness. Fifa has been pushing for Iran to open its stadiums for women for years, but Tehran has so far only rarely allowed a limited number of women (up to a thousand female supporters). November 2018) to attend a few meetings. The death of Sahar Khodayari sparked turmoil on social networks, where calls from celebrities, footballers or activists were launched at Fifa to ban Iran from international competitions.

"Live this in person"

After a visit by a delegation of the International Federation to Tehran in September, the authorities resolved to allow ticket sales to women for the Iran-Cambodia match. The places for the Azadi stadium have sold like hotcakes and "the presence of 3,500 Iranian supporters [...] is assured," according to the official Irna news agency.

Finding this figure insufficient, a Twitter campaign calls for more seats for women with the hashtag: #WakeUpFifa ( "Fifa Wake Up" ). Amnesty International on Wednesday called a "cynical publicity stunt" the Iranian decision to allow a "symbolic number of women" to enter the stadium on Thursday and called on Tehran to "lift all impediments to women's access to football matches" .

Sports journalist Raha Pourbakhsh proudly shows her e-ticket to her mobile phone. "I still can not believe it's going to happen. After all these years [...] watching everything on TV, I will now be able to live it in person, " she says. But unlike the theater or cinema, where women and men can sit side by side, supporters must fill stands reserved for them, and monitored, according to the agency Fars, by some 150 female police. "I would like women to be free, like men, to go to the stadium and [men and women] can sit side by side without any restriction," says AFP Hasti, a resident from Tehran.

++ Football. Women in the stadiums: FIFA plans to be present for Iran-Cambdoge

"They will regret it"

For Nader Fathi, who runs a ready-to-wear boutique, the presence of women in the stadiums could improve the atmosphere. But "they will regret it," he says, if they find themselves exposed to "really gross insults" or "bad behavior" . In 2001, about twenty Irish women were the first women to attend a men's football match (Iran-Ireland) in the country since the post-revolutionary ban.

The Iranians, they had to wait until 2005: only a few dozen were then able to attend a meeting Iran-Bahrain. Since then, authorizations have been rare. The ban on women in stadiums is regularly criticized within the political system. Conservative moderate, President Hassan Rohani has repeatedly said his willingness to put an end. This project, however, continues to face the opposition of the ultraconservative clan.

In October 2018, after a hundred supporters had been allowed to attend a friendly match between Iran and Bolivia, the country's Attorney General had ruled that exposing women to the sight of men "half naked Could lead to "sin" . For the business paper Donya-yé Eqtessad, the decision to allow the sale of tickets to women for Iran-Cambodia is a move aimed at "freeing Iranian football from the threat of Fifa sanctions" .

On Twitter, the government spokesman, Ali Rabii, was keen to ensure that this decision was the result of a "domestic demand to society and government support for this requirement," and certainly not "foreign pressure » . It remains to be seen whether it will please the International Federation. Tehran has so far not announced that women could attend matches in the Iranian league or other international matches, while Fifa demanded that women be allowed in football stadiums "for all matches" .

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