Iran is in the news again not for its nuclear program but for a very basic human right. For a long time, Iranian women are fighting for their right to watch football matches live, but the regime is not in favour of it.
Women intending to watch a football match were welcomed with pepper spray at the stadium.
According to media reports, the match was in the northeastern religious hub of Mashhad on Tuesday. Iran even defeated Lebanon, but there was no celebration and instead a large number of women – who were promised seats at the stadium – protested at the gates.
Many videos went viral on social media in which women were seen struggling after they were pepper-sprayed by the security officials.
According to official data cited in foreign media reports, some 2,000 women from a total of 12,000 spectators bought the ticket to the match, but they were kept out of the stadium deliberately.
Fatemeh Rahmani, Mashhad’s representative in parliament, while taking the matter to Twitter, said that the Sports Ministry was solely responsible for this incident as necessary steps were not taken to make sure that women could enter safely into the stadium.
In some matches where women were able to watch, they had to go through different gates than those reserved for men, while the seating section was exclusive to women only.
Due to these issues, FIFA is displeased with Iran, and the country is still banned from all non-international matches.
Merhdad Seraji, a member of the Iranian Football Federation’s board tweeted that this news was very ‘concerning’.
President Ebrahim Raisi also ordered his interior minister to investigate the pepper spray incident and present a detailed report.
