April 21, 2017
Iranian human rights activist Darya Safai is demanding Olympic sanctions against Iran as punishment for banning women from stadiums, a policy she described as “sexual apartheid.”
Speaking Friday in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, one of the two cities bidding for the 2024 Olympics, the 42-year-old, wearing a tee-shirt bearing the slogan “Let Iranian women enter their stadiums,” demanded an end to the stadium bar.
“We want to tell the International Olympic Committee and the international sports bodies that they must put an end to the discrimination and segregation that women face in sport, to say nothing is to condone it,” Safai told Agence France Presse (AFP).
Safai, who lives in exile in Belgium, said countries that do not respect “international charters and the universal values of sport” should be expelled.
The Olympic movement, however, has long opposed expulsion, arguing that sport should help bring people together and not be used as a tool of punishment. Sports federations could, however, cease to hold sponsored events in Iran, something that has been widely discussed but not adopted.
“It has been 40 years that women have been banned from stadiums in Iran, this means they are excluded from society. The international community must be mobilized to re-establish this right.”
Annie Sugier, the president of the International League of Women’s Rights, added that there were similar problems in Saudi Arabia. “Women are banned from stadiums and physical education for girls is also banned,” she said.