Hundreds of female soccer fans were pepper sprayed and blocked from entering a stadium in the northeastern city of Mashhad on Tuesday.
The state security forces fired teargas and pepper spray to disperse the crowds.
The state-run ISNA news agency reported yesterday that some 2,000 females had bought tickets to see Iran play Lebanon in the country’s last 2022 World Cup soccer qualifying match.
The Iranian Football Federation (FFI) however claimed on March 30 that that only nine women had purchased tickets for the match.
Speaking with the state-run Fars news agency, a women said that female soccer fans were told that they could get tickets and enter the stadium.
She added: ‘We were on the website yesterday from 12pm to 8pm so we could get tickets.
‘All the ladies who are here have tickets. We took leave from work, we spent a lot of money, but now they are saying women can’t enter.’
Meanwhile, social media reports and video footages indicate that upon arrival the women were immediately refused entry before security allforces pepper spray to disperse the crowds.
Video footage shared online shows women and girls choking and crying with their eyes streaming after being attacked outside the Imam Reza stadium on Tuesday.
Women have been barred from attending soccer matches since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
In October 2019, under pressure from FIFA, the Iranian Football Federation allowed only a selective and very restricted presence of women in the stadium for a World Cup qualifying match against Cambodia. It was the first time that Iranian women bought tickets and went to watch a football game, not in disguise in the role of a man, but as a football-loving woman.
Before that in September 2019, the International Football Association (FIFA) had threatened to suspend Iran if it did not allow female fans access to matches.
FIFA ordered Iran to allow women access to stadiums without restriction and in numbers to be determined according to demand for tickets.
The measure followed the self-immolation of Sahar Khodayari, also known as the Blue Girl, in September 2019 in protest to the six-month jail sentence she received for circumventing the ban on women’s entrance to sports stadiums.
It was hoped that women would be permitted to watch matches in stadiums going forward, but the Iranian Football Federation has not allowed women to the stadium under various excuses.
Women were to be allowed in the stadium again in early October for a World Cup qualifier against South Korea, but a late decision was made to hold the event behind closed doors amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The International Football Federation (FIFA) must stand with the women of Iran and boycott the clerical regime based on international standards to safeguard women’s rights in this area.
