He took advantage of his participation in the Asian Games to show his support for the protests over the death of the young Mahsa Amini, although he has now claimed that it was because he was “confused” with the “technical equipment”
A crowd welcomed Iranian climber Elnaz Rekabi at Tehran airport on Wednesday after the athlete competed in South Korea without a veil, local media reported.
Rekabi competed bareheaded wearing only a hair tie at a championship in Seoul on Sunday. This gesture was interpreted by some as a show of solidarity towards the protest movement that has been shaking Iran for a month, after the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman detained in Tehran by the morality police because her veil supposedly showed some locks of hair.
The Islamic Republic requires Iranian sportswomen to wear headscarves even at competitions abroad.
The crowd cheers as Elnaz Rekabi, a female climber who competed without a hijab in Seoul and was later censored and forced into an apology by Iranian authorities, arrives at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport in the early hours of the morning.#مهسا_امینیpic.twitter.com/KoiEOzhrGh
Shayan Sardarizadeh (@Shayan86) October 19, 2022
Rekabi, 33, arrived at Imam Khomeini International Airport early on Wednesday, according to a video released by the state agency IRNA. Dozens of people gathered to greet her, with cheers and applause as she walked out the doors, according to a video posted online by the reformist Shargh newspaper. The athlete appeared with a hood and a baseball cap and she was received by her family and then addressed the state media.
“Because of the atmosphere that reigned in the final of the competition and the fact that I was called up unexpectedly, I got confused with my technical equipment and that caused me to forget about the hijab,” she said. “I return to Iran in peace, in perfect health and according to my plans. I apologize to the people of Iran for the tensions this created,” he stated, adding that he had no intention of leaving the national team.
These comments are in line with the message published on Tuesday on her Instagram account, in which she apologized for “any concern” it may have caused and said that the decision to remove her veil “was not intentional”, but because she was called to compete ahead of schedule.
Human rights groups expressed concern about her situation following complaints from her friends who said they had been unable to contact her. However, in a statement sent to AFP, the Iranian embassy in Seoul denied “any false information and misinformation” about her situation.
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