The Iranian women’s football team appeared at a welcome ceremony in Tehran on Wednesday after returning from Australia where some had made and then withdrawn asylum claims, amid accusations Iran had pressured their families.
Six players and one backroom staff member who travelled to Australia for the Women’s Asian Cup sought asylum earlier this month after they sparked criticism from hardliners in Iran for failing to sing the national anthem before their first match.
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Five of them later changed their minds and returned home along with the rest of the team, including captain Zahra Ghanbari.
Activists have accused Iranian authorities of pressuring the women’s families, including summoning their parents for interrogations, while Tehran has alleged that Australia sought to force the athletes to defect.
“Our daughters, despite all the malice of the enemies of this country, have not become disillusioned with themselves; they have not surrendered to the temptations and intimidation of the Iran-haters,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament said in a social media post.
“They will return with pride to their eternal home, Iran.”
Several thousand people, many holding Iranian flags, turned out for the welcome event on Thursday evening in Valiasr Square in Tehran where other pro-government rallies have taken place in recent weeks, state TV images showed.
“My Choice. My Homeland,” read a slogan on a giant billboard on the square that showed the players in their national kit and hijabs saluting the Iranian flag.
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Two squad members have remained in Australia, but the rest of the team arrived back in Iran on Wednesday after a long journey home via Malaysia, Oman and Turkey.
“The regime in Iran started threatening their families and basically took their families hostage. Because of that, they were forced to withdraw their asylum and go back to Iran,” Shiva Amini, a former Iranian international who now lives in exile and campaigns on women’s rights, wrote on social media.
But Farideh Shojaei, an Iranian football official who travelled to Australia, said that the players had been offered “houses, cars, money, promises of contracts with professional clubs, as well as humanitarian visas”.
“Fortunately, the members of our team valued their national identity above all else and turned these offers down,” she told Iranian media.
Ahead of their opening game against South Korea on March 2, the Iranian team fell silent as the national anthem played in what was interpreted as an act of defiance towards the country’s leaders.
Although the side sang Iran’s anthem, which is an ode to the glory of the Islamic republic, in later matches, human rights activists warned they would face consequences at home, with the country at war with Israel and the United States.
An Iranian state TV presenter branded the players “wartime traitors”, fuelling fears they would face persecution, or worse, if they returned to Iran.
Iranian-born judoka Saeid Mollaei told CNN this week: “Ninety-nine per cent, maybe 100 per cent, they are not safe for sure when they go back.
“Maybe, they’ll be killed. Maybe, they’ll go to prison. I don’t know.
“They’re fighting the regime for one word: freedom.”
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