Iran’s only female Olympic medalist, Kimia Alizadeh, announced her decision to flee her country in an Instagram post featuring a photo from the 2016 Summer Games, where she won a bronze medal in taekwondo.
“Should I start with hello, a goodbye or condolences?” the 21-year-old taekwondo fighter wrote in Persian. “I am one of the millions of oppressed women in Iran who they have been playing with for years.”
In her viral post, the 21 year-old accused the Islamic republic's government of “injustice” by exploiting Iranian women as political tools.
“They didn’t care about me. None of us mattered to them, we were tools,” Alizadeh wrote.
Respect! #Iran’s only female Olympic medallist #KimiaAlizadeh announced she has permanently left her country, citing the "oppressive" regime and “hypocrisy” of a system she claims humiliates athletes while using them for political ends.https://t.co/nngPu3b6wD
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) January 12, 2020
She criticized wearing the mandatory hijab headscarf and accused officials in Iran of sexism and mistreatment.
“Whatever they said, I wore. Every sentence they ordered, I repeated.”
She described the decision to leave Iran as difficult, but necessary.
“My troubled spirit does not fit into your dirty economic channels and tight political lobbies. I wish for nothing else than for taekwondo, safety and for a happy and healthy life.”
#KimiaAlizadeh, Iran’s only female Olympic medalist, has rejected the regime’s oppression of women. She has defected for a life of security, happiness, and freedom. #Iran will continue to lose more strong women unless it learns to empower and support them. https://t.co/NIzdo4PPwI
— Morgan Ortagus (@statedeptspox) January 12, 2020
“The sweet and sad people of Iran, I did not want to climb the steps of progress based on corruption and lies. I accept the pain of homesickness because I did not want to sit at the table of hypocrisy, lies, injustice and flattery,” she wrote.
“I am one of the millions of oppressed women in Iran...I wore whatever they told me to wear. I repeated everything they told me to say. None of us matter to them.” Shame that talented Iranians like #KimiaAlizadeh have a better shot to realize their potential everywhere but Iran. https://t.co/NheJiSGOmh
— Len Khodorkovsky (@MessageFromLen) January 12, 2020
Alizadeh is the latest Iranian athlete to stop representing the country in recent months.
In October, Olympian and world champion judo fighter Saeid Mollaei refused to go back home to Iran over safety concerns after he ignored orders from the International Judo Federation to pull out of fights to avoid competing against Israelis.
Pourya Jalalipour, an Iranian para-archer who was set to compete in this year’s Olympics, left Iran in July to seek asylum in the Netherlands.
