Iran: NCRI Women’s Committee urges international condemnation of clerical regime’s gender apartheid, barring women from entering stadiums and attacking them with pepper spray
The Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) strongly condemns the mullahs’ regime for barring women and girls from entering the Imam Reza Stadium in Mashhad and attacking them with pepper spray. This is another manifestation of the brutality of the ruling medieval and misogynistic tyranny that considers women second-class citizens, deprives them of their basic political, social, and economic rights, and has tortured or executed tens of thousands of women political prisoners.
On the evening of Tuesday, March 29, many women and girls in Mashhad who had bought tickets to attend a soccer match were prevented from entering the stadium. They gathered outside the stadium to protest but were attacked by the State Security Force (SSF) who used pepper spray against them.
The infamous cleric Ahmad Alam al-Hoda, Khamenei’s representative in Mashhad and the father-in-law of Ebrahim Raisi (the henchman of the 1988 massacre), called the presence of women in stadiums a sin. Terrified of women’s hatred and disgust for the mullahs’ despicable regime, authorities prevent any gathering of women not under the full control of its repressive forces.
The NCRI Women’s Committee urges the United Nations Secretary-General, the UN Human Rights Council and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the relevant UN bodies, as well as other human rights and women’s rights activists, to condemn the clerical regime’s repressive actions against women and preventing them from participating in sports. It calls on the International Football Federation (FIFA) and other sports authorities to reprimand the Iranian regime for gender apartheid and ban it from international competition.
National Council of Resistance of Iran – Women’s Committee
March 30, 2022
