Beaten, jailed and living in fear – the cost of supporting your team in Tehran
Iranian women reveal high price for attending games disguised as men
ZAHRA KHOSHNAVAZ knew she had taken a risk when she joined five other female fans and attended a high-profile football match disguised as a man. The aspiring Iranian poet and activist understood also that she risked provoking the country’s infamous morality police by then posting photographs of herself at Persepolis’s ground wearing a fake wig and beard.
But the ban on women going to football games was not inscribed in law and, having advertised her previous trips to games involving Persepolis or Iran on social media, she assumed she was safe from harm and incarceration.
She was wrong. Such is the price for supporting England’s first opponents at the World Cup in Qatar.
‘I chose a big game because I wanted it to be effective,’ Khoshnavaz told The Mail on Sunday, writing on one of the few messaging apps that state security has not managed to block. She is too afraid to speak on the telephone.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard summoned Khoshnavaz, 31, and the other women soon after her Instagram post appeared. ‘They called me and told me to go to them for questioning. We had not committed a crime. But they were behaving very badly, as if we were murderers.’
To this day, Khoshnavaz remains at a loss to explain the grounds for the prison sentence and fine that she received, leaving her to spend three months in the notorious Qarchak prison, south of Tehran.
Qarchak jail is said to house more than double its capacity of designated prisoners, lacks a working sewer and operates with severely depleted medical supplies.
At some point during her ordeal, Khoshnavaz says she was physically abused, though the experience is too traumatic for her to detail. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she says. ‘I am both tormented by the memory of it and afraid that it might happen again.’
SUCH treatment mirrors the tragic case of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old who was arrested last month for not wearing a hijab according to government standards and subsequently died in a Tehran hospital, having reportedly been beaten by police.
Iran authorities claimed she died from pre-existing medical conditions, but that did little to quell anger. Nationwide protests that followed sparked violent clashes with police and posed one of the greatest threats to the country’s theocracy since the 1979 revolution.
As a prominent activist, Khoshnavaz has been summoned for questioning again, but experience had taught her not to comply this time. ‘They called me and told me to go for interrogation,’ she says. ‘I didn’t go. I had to run.’
She is now in hiding, living in fear for her safety and still suffering the consequences of her arrest following the Asian Champions League game against Qatar’s Al Saad in 2019. She strongly suspects an intervention from agents of the state led to her losing the licence for her beauty salon and she has been unable to find other work, having repeatedly been denied opportunities without explanation.
When Iranian authorities let a limited number of women attend a game in Tehran in August, Khoshnavaz was refused access, again without a reason.
A pair of Iranian film-makers have made an award-winning documentary about her, but shining a light on her plight has not improved it. Answering questions often in an epigrammatic style, she admits to being broken by the system.
‘I wanted to change the world but now see only I have changed,’ says Khoshnavaz, who developed a passion for football as a child and played futsal as a teenager.
‘I was a brave girl but now I’m scared. I was happy but now I’m sad. I still have hope, but really I am in the depths of hell.’
IRANIAN women were originally prohibited from entering stadiums after the revolution, with clerical rulers giving various reasons over the years for the decision, including the corrupting influence it would supposedly have on both male fans and the women.
Though it became fairly commonplace for women to sneak into stadiums in disguise, the ban survived without serious challenge until the horrific case of Sahar Khodayari, a 29-year-old fan of Esteghlal, another club in Tehran.
Khodayari, who lived with bipolar disorder, was spotted by security guards trying to attend an Asian Champions League match in 2019 and was charged with ‘committing a sinful act by appearing in public without a hijab’, as well as ‘insulting officials’.
She set herself on fire outside the courthouse that was due to hear her case and died from her injuries, with local reports saying she was given a six-month jail sentence while in hospital.
Known as the ‘Blue Girl’ after the colours of her club, her fate attracted international attention and prompted FIFA to put pressure on the Iranian federation to lift the ban. In 2019, the federation finally complied and allowed 4,000 female supporters into a World Cup qualifier against Cambodia in Tehran’s Azadi Stadium. The hosts won 14-0.
In March, however, security guards used pepper spray to prevent around 2,000 female ticketholders from entering a stadium in the city of Mashhad to watch another qualifier against Lebanon.
Footage of the incident sparked international outrage and prompted FIFA to write to the Iranian federation demanding that women were not barred again. With FIFA’s statutes prohibiting any form of discrimination among its member states, Iran’s highly coveted World Cup place was at risk.
In response, around 500 women were allowed to watch Esteghlal defeat Sanat Mes Kerman at the 78,116-capacity Azadi Stadium.
The fans did their best to make their presence felt, holding up a banner saying ‘Women deserve more than this’ and chanting ‘Blue Girl, Blue Girl’ in honour of Khodayari, but most assumed their presence was little more than a PR exercise. ‘If it wasn’t, why wasn’t I let in?’ Khoshnavaz says.
Sepidah, a 26-year-old student who attended Persepolis matches with her father disguised as a boy, agrees that such scenes only mask the continued discrimination within football grounds.
‘The women and men are separated, so attending with your family is still a dream,’ says Sepidah, who now lives overseas and requested her surname was kept secret to protect her family in Iran. ‘There are morality police everywhere, not letting in women with “bad” hijab as they call it.’
Only a limited number of women are allowed inside grounds and required to use their own entrance. ‘The whole thing is controlled like they are afraid of the women, afraid of them doing something or saying something not to their liking.’
Rights groups estimate more than 250 protesters have been killed by security forces using live ammunition and tear gas to quell demonstrations in dozens of cities.
High-profile Iranian footballers, meanwhile, have been punished for expressing their support for both female supporters and the women who are risking their lives by taking to the streets without a hijab.
I wanted to experience the joy of being in the stadium before I die
Hossein Mahini, Persepolis’s retired captain, has been arrested on charges of ‘encouraging riots and sympathising with the enemy’, after he posted support for the protests on social media. Ali Daei, the most famous Iranian footballer, had his passport confiscated for criticising the government.
The escalating situation prompted a Spanish law firm, Ruiz-Huerta & Crespo, to submit a formal letter to FIFA last week urging them to remove Iran from the World Cup. The lawyers claimed to have the support of several Iranian athletes, including footballers.
‘People are right to be asking whether Iran should be at the World Cup,’ says Mustafa Qadri, executive director of Equidem Research, which runs human rights investigations. ‘We’re powerless to help people in Iran. But we can say that we will not accept this kind of behaviour and we have to consider them being boycotted.’
Whether diplomatic steps are taken or not, Khoshnavaz does not expect her situation to improve in the short term. Only if tensions eased on the streets would she consider breaking cover.
‘I am worried, but my life is no more valuable than the lives of those who are being killed on the streets,’ she says. ‘I wanted to experience the joy of being in the stadium before I die. I wanted to be able to shout support for my team without it being choked in my throat. I wanted equality.’