Iranian chess referee accused of violating islamic dress code, says she won't return home. JANUARY 17, 2020, JANUARY 16, 2020 (c) 2020 Reuters [IRAN-HIJAB/CHESS] (STREAM-700-16X9-MP4) pic.twitter.com/ZFfoJSPoxD— chris and the Fippos (@dotfip) January 21, 2020
'Maybe they'd put me in prison; maybe they'd make an example of me'— Sarah Rainsford (@sarahrainsford) January 20, 2020
Shohreh Bayat, top level chess arbiter, says she's scared to return to Iran after a row broke out over how she wore her hijab at the women's world championship.
Here's her story of what happened @MishaFriedman pic.twitter.com/AZPaxgz3V1
Iranian chess arbiter Shohreh Bayat won’t return to Iran after photos of her not wearing a hijab were circulated. She fears for her life and her family. https://t.co/1VzTRL1PV7— Andrew Backhouse (@Andytwit123) January 17, 2020
BBC News
written by Sarah Rainsford
Wednesday January 15, 2020
For 32-year-old Iranian Shohreh Bayat, the Women's World Chess Championship was meant to be a career highlight.
It is her first time as the event's chief arbiter - a senior role.
But that achievement has been clouded by controversy after the circulation of a photograph taken at game in Shanghai that appears to show Ms Bayat without a headscarf, as her country mandates.
She now feels unsafe to return to Iran, where women can be arrested for violating strict Islamic dress code.
"I turned on my mobile and saw that my picture was everywhere [in Iranian media]. They were claiming I was not wearing a headscarf and that I wanted to protest against the hijab," Ms Bayat told the BBC.
She says she was, in fact, covering her head as she always has at international tournaments, despite disagreeing with the rule.
'Women should have right to choose'
"It's against my beliefs. People should have the right to choose the way they want to dress, it should not be forced," she explained, speaking from Vladivostok in eastern Russia, where she is now refereeing the second leg of the World Championship.
"I was tolerating it because I live in Iran. I had no other choice."
But this time Ms Bayat has run into serious problems.
The photographs circulating online and being discussed by Iran's state media show Ms Bayat's scarf apparently draped over her shoulders and not over her hair. In other pictures from the same day, her head is clearly - albeit loosely - covered.
Ms Bayat says Iran's chess federation instructed her to "write something" in response to the fuss, which she took to mean an apology and a defence of Iran's dress code.
She refused.
So now she says it's too risky to return to her family.
"There are many people in prison in Iran because of the headscarf. It's a very serious issue. Maybe they'd want to make an example of me," she explains, adding that she had "totally panicked" when she saw the reaction online.
The International Chess Federation (Fide), has not commented officially on the situation, as Ms Bayat has not broken any of its rules. But English grandmaster and now Fide Vice-President Nigel Short did tweet a photo praising the chief arbiter.
Ms Bayat says she asked Iran's chess federation to write a letter guaranteeing her safety on her return, but they declined. She believes that they are under pressure, from higher up.
'My achievements have been overlooked'
Ms Bayat is angry that the argument over how she dresses has overshadowed her achievements in chess, where she's one of only a few top level women arbiters in the world - and the only one at all in Asia.
"I can't think of any Iranian women who have worked at such a high-level tournament. But the only thing that matters for them is my hijab, not my qualification. That really bothers me," Ms Bayat says.
Her own case comes soon after Iran's first female Olympic medal-winner apparently defected. Kimia Alizadeh later posted on Instagram that she had left Iran partly because she was fed up with its mandatory dress code.
"I think people are under too much pressure, especially athletes," Ms Bayat says, adding: "This pressure to be something that you are not."
She had felt that herself, even before the main controversy erupted: she had sent a photograph for Iran's chess federation website, only to have it request another because the hijab on the image Ms Bayat had chosen was not "good enough".
For now, Ms Bayat is focusing on the job in hand: refereeing in Vladivostok as China's Ju Wenjun defends her title from Russian challenger Alexandra Gorychkina.
She's not yet sure of her own next move.
But as she cannot return to Iran, she has concluded that she has nothing more to lose and has removed her hijab altogether.
"This is a very hard decision. I feel so sad because I'm going to miss my family," she confesses, though she said taking off her scarf meant she could "be myself".
"If I had a choice to go back to Iran, of course I would love to," Ms Bayat says. "But I don't know what would happen to me."
Compulsory #hijab is a form of oppression & control devised by misogynistic Iranian mullahs to maintain their patriarchal system.— Brad Rush (@OtagoGrad) January 19, 2020
Over 100,000 women protested on the streets of Tehran, #Iran, in Mar 1979 against hijab
The next day, all were forced to wear it#IranProtests pic.twitter.com/y2VuNcKXCv
Fun fact should @BernieSanders win the Democratic nomination: In 1979, he sided with Khomeini & the Iranians who seized the US embassy & held American diplomats captive for 444 days.— Daniel Pipes دانيال بايبس (@DanielPipes) January 19, 2020
Just wondering how well that will go over in the 2020 general election.https://t.co/VWNLdCuxLr
#NasrinSotoudeh, a prominent Iranian #HumanRights lawyer, has been sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes because of her work defending women's rights & protesting against Iran’s forced hijab laws. We asked for her Immediate release now.#FreeNasrin pic.twitter.com/F7qCKMgPSL— Nick Sotoudeh (@NickSotoudeh) January 19, 2020
Imagine if you were never allowed to show your hair & wear the clothes you want in public. In #Iran, forced hijab laws control women’s bodies. Nasrin Sotoudeh was sentenced to 38 years in prison & 148 lashes for speaking out against this injustice.pic.twitter.com/sYl9D67NhS— Ashraf 🏳 (@ItsASJBaloch) January 7, 2020
THIS is Code Pink, celebrating the same regime supporting Hamas, Hezbollah and Assad in Syria. Iran just sentenced a lawyer to 38 years in prison & 148 lashes...for defending a woman who shed her hijab. What qualifies someone to be included on USA's terrorist watchlist? https://t.co/vx6ldXwOVt— Peter Korman (@pjkorman) March 31, 2019
2/ Here’s a clip of the viral video which garnered #MojganKeshavarz 23 years in an Iranian prison last April.— SM Radio سمیرا (@SMohyeddin) December 29, 2019
Her crime: handing out flowers to women on a Tehran subway to mark #IWD while not wearing hijab
She was charged with encouraging prostitution https://t.co/llalS0pq4z pic.twitter.com/juLAA7JR1C
This is Mojgan Keshavarz and yesterday was her birthday. Mojgan could not celebrate her birthday because she is in jail.— Inbar Cohen (@InbarCohen13) January 2, 2020
She was sentenced to 23.6 years for peacefully protesting against #Iran’s mandatory #hijab law.
Where are all the liberal feminists now? pic.twitter.com/kRqC1gqae6
👇 A MUST READ THREAD IN TWEET BELOW 👇
I'll share a few pieces from this thread written by a Communist
Speaking of Code Pink, wasn’t Susan Benjamin evicted from Cuba for reactionary writing? https://t.co/wyDiteAa65— Alfredo Gomes (@mindgomes) October 9, 2019
“I got a job, believe it or not, with USAID” (I believe it) which was being used in a US counterinsurgency Program in 1978. pic.twitter.com/QARW2r4VAo— Alfredo Gomes (@mindgomes) November 10, 2019
Next came Cuba for Benjamin where she could only find work as a translator for Cuba’s “only” newspaper (Granma?); she doesn’t mention the name but there was more than one newspaper in Cuba during that time so Benjamin is lying. “And it was a terrible newspaper” pic.twitter.com/HzUTEgfEvW— Alfredo Gomes (@mindgomes) November 10, 2019
“It was a rag”— Alfredo Gomes (@mindgomes) November 10, 2019
“It was the Communist Party newspaper” (ah, so it had to have been Granma)
“And I was translating Fidel Castro’s speeches”
I’ve always wondered how Benjamin got such an important job; in the same vein as Marc Cooper becoming Allende’s translator as a 21 year old👌 pic.twitter.com/DOKzckBWIS
It seems Benjamin thought Fidel Castro’s speeches used too much “flowery language” and she would edit his long speeches down, leaving parts out. “I cut out the parts that didn’t really sound very good in English” pic.twitter.com/SCUtAlZ48b— Alfredo Gomes (@mindgomes) November 10, 2019
Granma (I assume) asked Benjamin: “what are you doing editing Fidel Castro’s speeches?”— Alfredo Gomes (@mindgomes) November 10, 2019
“That was the first thing that got me in trouble”
The second thing that got Benjamin in trouble:
“I would question things”
“Why don’t we have other points of view in the newspaper?”
Hahaha pic.twitter.com/YSzEAAbBU8
“So I got kicked out of the newspaper. And in Cuba, if you lose your job, you lose your housing” 👌— Alfredo Gomes (@mindgomes) November 10, 2019
“And then one thing led to another. I ended up writing freelance” (for whom?)
“And the Cuban government got a hold of some of the pieces that I wrote” pic.twitter.com/Msk3K1iPh6
Benjamin was critiquing Cuba’s economic policy of controlling price-gouging (“They were selling things at very high prices” and Castro shut down those markets).— Alfredo Gomes (@mindgomes) November 10, 2019
Benjamin: “And I said that was the wrong way to deal with it. And my critique was considered counterrevolutionary.” pic.twitter.com/ZJHw5L7ZGT
“And in the end I was put on a military escort to a plane and sent out of the country”. Deported a third time. Her Cuban husband stayed behind (if I recall correctly; they had a child as well; not sure if she went with Benjamin). pic.twitter.com/oTavLhn5rn— Alfredo Gomes (@mindgomes) November 10, 2019
Benjamin was eventually allowed back into Cuba via a NACLA contact. NACLA “has a board member who was Cuba’s lawyer in the United States. He did get me in.” pic.twitter.com/XKOJBw6V0v— Alfredo Gomes (@mindgomes) November 10, 2019
What isn’t mentioned is that NACLA receives a large portion of their funding via the anti-Communist Ford Foundation: https://t.co/k9359LoRNt— Alfredo Gomes (@mindgomes) November 10, 2019
Basically, Benjamin was assisted by an anti-Communist funded org to re-enter a Communist State. Why would NACLA do such a thing? 🤔🤔🤔 pic.twitter.com/NElPnHam8H
The other co-founder of Code Pink, Jodie Evans, is chair of the Women's Media Center board, founded by the women's directorate at the CIA (Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan). There, she overseas projects like 'Women Under Siege', peddling rape lies for the State Dept. pic.twitter.com/Q3TNjUvo2j— bak (@measure7x) November 11, 2019
This week, @JaneFonda’s @FireDrillFriday will be addressing the connection between #ClimateChange and militarism.— Ariel Gold אריאל NO WAR WITH IRAN 🔥☮️ (@ArielElyseGold) November 6, 2019
Activists and scholars, including @MsJodieEvans, will be discussing the cost of war to the planet. Join us at #FireDrillFriday! 🔥🔥🔥https://t.co/tBBKXQW10k pic.twitter.com/KnjgzWhwIQ
Here are some fun facts! The 2018 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranked the environmental policies of 180 countries. Here are some key rankings:— Truth B. Told (@TSknee) November 6, 2019
19. Israel
27. United States
51. Venezuela
55. Cuba
80. Iran
Ariel and Code Pink aren't backing the greenest horses!
Code Pink is funded by the Benjamin Fund, bankrolled by Susan/"Medea"'s daddy's estate. He was a veteran/capitalist. The Fund invests in major corporations connected to Israel and big Pharma. If you support Code Pink, you're supporting the vanity project of a trust fund baby.— Truth B. Told (@TSknee) October 18, 2019
No comments:
Post a Comment