Olympics athlete Marzieh Hamidi fled from Afghanistan in 2021 after the Taliban regime took over
| Picture Credit score: Particular association
Even because the Afghan cricket workforce wins accolades for its efficiency within the ICC Champion’s Cup Trophy in Pakistan, 22-year-old Olympics athlete Marzieh Hamidi faces dying threats for calling for a boycott towards the workforce. Ms. Hamidi, who fled from Afghanistan in 2021 after the Taliban regime took over, says the ICC should implement its rule towards recognising cricketing nations that don’t have each males’s and girls’s groups. As well as, she says that groups promoted by the Taliban needs to be boycotted, as South African groups as soon as had been, provided that the Taliban regime practices “gender apartheid”, banning girls and ladies from schooling, sports activities, and all out of doors actions.
Chatting with The Hindu on the sidelines of the Herat Safety Dialogue held in Madrid, the place she gave a speech about her marketing campaign known as ‘Let Us Exist’, Ms. Hamidi, a taekwondo champion who was Afghanistan’s flag-bearer on the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, now lives with police safety in France.
“Once I spoke out towards the Afghan cricket workforce, their followers first attacked me on social media,” she stated, describing how inside days she obtained greater than 5,000 cellphone calls and messages with dying threats and rape threats after she was ‘doxxed’ (had all her private data leaked over the Web) in September 2024. “All I stated was that the Taliban isn’t recognised, and that the workforce should not be allowed to normalise them by competing in worldwide sport,” Ms. Hamidi stated.
In Pakistan, the place his workforce gained an exhilarating match towards England on February 26, Afghanistan captain Hashmatullah Shahidi stated he supported the ladies’s workforce’s proper to play, however the state of affairs was past their management.
“We’re sportspersons. We management what we are able to do inside the bottom, and we are able to’t fear about what’s occurring out of the bottom,” Mr. Shahidi instructed The Hindu. “Everybody likes to see everybody play. Relating to politics and people issues which we can not management, we’re solely cricket gamers, we are able to management issues on the bottom,” he added.
Though each the English and Australian groups have performed matches with Mr. Shahidi’s workforce on the ICC match in Pakistan, their boards have known as on the ICC to evaluate its recognition of the workforce. In 2024, Cricket Australia cancelled a T20 sequence towards Afghanistan citing a “deteriorating human rights state of affairs for ladies and ladies”. In January this 12 months, after 160 British MPs signed a petition calling for his or her workforce to boycott the sport on February 26, U.Okay. Prime Minister Keir Starmer stated that the ICC “ought to clearly ship on their very own guidelines and ensure that they (the Afghanistan Cricket Board) are supporting girls’s cricket because the England Cricket Board does”.
A number of boards have additionally instructed that the ICC contemplate recognising the 2020 Afghan girls’s workforce, who at the moment are refugees and reunited in Melbourne for a match on January 30 this 12 months.
ICC President Jay Shah, nevertheless, overruled the objections. In statements to Reuters and the BBC, Mr. Shah stated that the ICC was “reviewing sure communications regarding Afghanistan girls’s cricket and exploring how they are often supported inside ICC’s authorized and constitutional framework”, and would proceed to interact the Afghanistan Cricket Board on the problem.
The choice was a disappointment, stated Ms. Hamidi, who’s now coaching for the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, however is unsure concerning the future, given the threats over her boycott calls. She stated India has a specific duty to make sure justice for ladies in sports activities in Afghanistan, given the function performed by India in coaching the Afghan workforce from its begin in 2001; BCCI’s assist within the Afghanistan Cricket Board gaining recognition; and in offering a house floor in Dehradun when the preventing between Taliban and Afghan nationwide forces made it tough to play of their nation.
“It was fantastic that India helped construct the workforce of its neighbour, of Afghanistan. However supporting it as we speak comes at a price — they [the Afghan cricketers] are normalising a gaggle of terrorists. It isn’t simply gender apartheid that may be a drawback in Afghanistan; the therapy of all Afghans by the Taliban is an issue,” she instructed The Hindu.
When requested how she focuses on her coaching, Ms. Hamidi stated she has learnt to roll with the punches. Born to an Afghan refugee household residing in Iran in 2002, she moved between Iran and Afghanistan all through her childhood. In 2020, she moved again to Kabul and pursued her Taekwondo abilities, representing her nation at worldwide championships till the Taliban took management of Afghanistan in August 2021. “It was a alternative between silence and exile,” she says of her resolution to flee to France.
(With inputs from Shayan Acharya, Lahore)
Revealed – March 02, 2025 06:28 PM is
