December 16, 2022
Social media have gone into high gear over a young woman athlete who competed in South Korea without wearing any headcovering. She promptly said she did so unintentionally, and the regime publicly appeared to have been willing to accept that, so long as she said nothing critical of the regime. But it is now reported the family home in Zanjan has been bulldozed and the athlete is under house arrest.
Video showed Elnaz Rekabi, 33, a member of the Iranian national rock climbing team, scaling a wall during an Asian competition October 16 with her pony tail freely flopping behind her.
When that was pointed out, she said she was called to climb the wall earlier than she expected and failed to put on her headscarf as she gathered her equipment and made her way quickly to the competition site. She did not say, and was not asked, why she did not have her headscarf on while she was awaiting the call to compete.
Rekabi returned to Iran with the rest of the rock climbing team and was greeted at Imam Khomeini International Airport by a huge crowd of people expressing support for her and concern that she might be disciplined for her failure to abide by the hejab rules.
At the airport, she looked quite nervous as she repeated her statement that her failure to abide by the rules was unintentional. She was wearing a baseball cap and hoodie rather than an Islamic headscarf. She has disappeared from public view since then.
The president of Iran’s National Olympic Committee said Rekabi would not be punished. Mahmud Khosravi-Vafa was quoted as saying, “It’s a small issue. I’m surprised that it’s being talked about so much. In our, view it was not a big issue.”
But on December 2, the Montreal-based IranWire reported thsat Rekabi had been placed under house arrest and that the family home in Zanjan had been destroyed.
At the 2021 World Championships of the International Federation of Sport Climbing, Rekabi won a bronze medal. At this year’s Asian event, she came in fourth.
Canada-based IranWire said an unnamed source told it that the Sports Ministry threatened to confiscate her family’s property if she talked to the media or left the country.
Later, the Sports Ministry denounced an inline skater November 8 for accepting an award at a competition in Turkey without wearing a headscarf. It said Nilofar Mardani, a member of the national speed-skating team for a decade, had been dropped from the team a month earlier and competed on her own in the Turkish event. It said the national team did not participate in the event.
