The Daily Beast, 21 June 2014 – Last week, dozens of Iranian girls and women stood outside the closed gates of Tehran’s Azadi Stadium. All they wanted was the chance to cheer their volleyball team in its game against Brazil. But, because they are not men, they were banned from attending.
When I tell one of my American friends about this, she looks at me with surprise and says, “you try so hard for such modest demands.” Looking at a photograph of women with faint smiles standing outside the closed gates of the stadium, she adds, “What a sad picture this is!” I confess that her words make me so sad that I can’t bear to tell her that it’s only Iranian women that were barred from the stadium. Brazilian women were able to sit comfortably next to men, cheering on their team.
Fans are experiencing further obstacles to watching the sports they love. Cinema owners had hoped to arrange screenings for this year’s World Cup games. But General Ahmadi Moghadam, commander of Iran’s Security Forces, announced that football matches would not be shown in cinemas to mixed audiences. It would only be tolerated if men and women watched games in separate halls. Cinema owners abandoned their efforts.
Then, a couple of days before the World Cup games started on June 12, authorities announced that football matches could not be shown in restaurants and coffee shops either. The president of the Coffee Shop Owners Union told ISNA news agency that “we have told our members that during the World Cup games they must either turn the TV off or switch to a channel which is not broadcasting the games.”
In an interview with IranWire, Sara, one of those who had stood in protest outside the closed gates at Azadi Stadium hoping to watch the volleyball match, says “I don’t know exactly how many of us were there. Azadi Stadium has many gates, and there were 30 to 50 women outside each. Some wore chadors and some had manteaux on. Some were in full hejab and some were wearing the required headscarf, but they all had one demand—to enter the stadium to cheer on their favorite national volleyball team.”…