Iran’s only female Olympic medalist, Kimia Alizadeh, has permanently left her country for Europe amid anti-government protests in cities across Iran and international pressure following the accidental shooting down of a Ukrainian flight, claiming 176 lives.
At 21 years old, Alizadeh made history as the first Iranian woman to win an Olympic medal, securing taekwondo bronze in the -57kg category at the 2016 Rio Olympics. She is immensely popular in her country.
Adhering to Iran’s strict Muslim customs, she competed at the Rio Olympics wearing a headscarf over her taekwondo uniform and protective gear.
In a very tough decision, Alizadeh felt ‘used’ by the Iranian government, stating they had been manipulating her and millions of Iranian women for years. She conveyed this in an Instagram post on Saturday, explaining her defection.
“Let me start with a greeting, a farewell or condolences,” Alizadeh wrote. “I am one of the millions of oppressed women in Iran who they have been playing with for years.”
“They took me wherever they wanted. I wore whatever they said. Every sentence they ordered me to say, I repeated. Whenever they saw fit, they exploited me,” she detailed, emphasizing how the credit always went to those in charge.
“I wasn’t important to them. None of us mattered to them, we were tools,” she continued. “The virtue of a woman is not to stretch her legs!”
Alizadeh expressed her refusal to be complicit with the regime’s “corruption and lies,” declaring, “My troubled spirit does not fit with your dirty economic ties and tight political lobbies. I wish for nothing else than for Taekwondo, safety and for a happy and healthy life, she said adding that she was not invited to go to Europe.”
She likened her decision to leave Iran to be harder than winning Olympic gold, asserting, “I remain a daughter of Iran wherever I am.”
In response, Iranian MP Abdolkarim Hosseinzadeh has demanded answers, blaming the “incompetent officials” of the Taekwondo Federation for allowing Iran’s “human capital to flee” the country.