The death sentence of the Iranian soccer player and the silence of FIFA

In Iran’s three games during the World Cup in Qatar, several of their fans showed the shirt of their national team. But it wasn’t that of Mehdi Taremi, his star, the Porto striker, or that of Ehsan Hajsafi, his captain. Nor was it the triumph of sports brands that achieved something unthinkable a decade ago: that people of any age wear their team’s jerseys anywhere and much more on the courts. The one they showed, unfolded so that the number 22 bib could be seen, was named Mahsa Amini. Mahsa was a 22-year-old girl who in September of this year was arrested with her family on the streets of Tehran by the Moral Police. They accused her of not being dressed as the rules indicate: her hijab was poorly placed. The police beat them up to the vehicle that would take them to the place of detention. Along the way, they kept hitting them. Mahsa was hit with a baton in the back of the head. She lost consciousness. Iranian officials mocked and accused her of overacting. She was denied medical care for hours despite the pleas of her family members. The damage was irreversible. After three days in a coma, her death was declared. The young woman became a symbol of the struggle for freedoms in the Asian country and provoked a protest movement that escalated. And that she also reached the World Cup.

In the first game, the Iranian players did not sing their country’s anthem. It was their way of accompanying the protests. Captain Hajsafi testified in favor of the demonstrators and called for freedoms. He said that “the situation is not good and people are not happy.” And, without mentioning the government, he clarified that they would play for the Iranian people. He also expressed his condolences to the families of the repression and told them that “I was on their side.” That day the team was thrashed by England. Before the second match, the squad sang the anthem under pressure (and threatened) by the Iranian regime. The audience whistled them.

During that game, as in the first game, there were exiled Iranians who showed the number 22 shirt with the name Mahsa. They also had their nails painted white, green and red with the slogan: Women, Life and Freedom (the motto of the protests in their country). But they did not last long in the stands. Iranian fanatics -in every sense of the term-, supposedly sent by their government, surrounded them, stole their shirts and pushed them out of the stadium. Nobody did anything to stop it. The aggressors continued in Qatar until the end of the Iranian participation. FIFA did not veto their entry into the third match when there was no longer any doubt that they would not encourage their team but that they were acting as cancer fighters for the regime. Throughout the tournament, when they weren’t the ones who snatched the flags with slogans protesting against the Islamic Republic or calling for the rights of women in their land, they made sure that the security of the stadium did so.

The third match of the Asian national team also caused controversy. It was a geopolitical confrontation: Iran — the United States. The winner also got the pass to the next round.

The defeat prevented them from moving on to the next phase, with the aggravating factor of having been defeated by their greatest enemy in the West. However, in the streets of Tehran there were honks, whistles, some fireworks and several sounded their vuvuzelas celebrating not only the defeat of the football team but that Ali Khamenei’s regime could not take advantage of the sporting victory. Street demonstrations celebrating the victory against Wales in the second match had annoyed many and angered the authoritarian government. In the streets, after the defeat against the United States, the cry of “Death to the dictator” was heard. There was also repression by the official forces and at least two motorists who blew their horns to celebrate the defeat were killed by police bullets.

One of them was Mehran Samak, 27 years old. Samak had been a childhood friend of Saeied Ezatolahi, a member of the Iranian squad in the World Cup, one of those defeated on the field of play. Ezatolahi remembered his friend on social media and expressed his pain. And he wrote on Instagram: “This is not what our youth deserve. This is not what our Nation deserves.”

During that third match, Iranian shock forces and members of Qatari stadium security attacked demonstrators who sang the slogan Women, Life and Freedom or who were brandishing Amini’s shirt. Protests by various international organizations multiplied. Faced with the increase in pressure and the dissemination of videos showing the repression inside the stadiums, FIFA allowed flags with the Iranian motto and t-shirts with the number 22 and the name of the murdered girl for the next matches. The biggest detail is that at that point in the tournament the Iranian national team was already eliminated.

FIFA has always been reluctant to speak out against authoritarian governments. The catchphrase that their different presidents have repeated for decades is that politics and sports should not be mixed. This is no longer a fallacy but a simple lie.

Politics is one of the facets, one of the dimensions, of modern professional sports. Just as the world championships are a sporting event, they are also, at the same time, an event of economic importance, a political event and a sociological phenomenon, among other things. Each of these dimensions intersects and intertwines in an inseparable way.

What FIFA authorities have always avoided are pronouncements against government actions, pronouncements that could complicate their future business. FIFA never stopped interacting and maneuvering politically with governments of different legitimacy of origin and exercise. But that, of course, is not a new phenomenon. There are plenty of examples. The most obvious are the 1934 World Cup in Mussolini’s fascist Italy, the 1938 World Cup that was to be played in South America and was brought to France by Jules Rimet due to the proximity of the Second War, the 1978 World Cup played under the Argentine military dictatorship.

FIFA, since its statutes, prohibits the interference of political power in its powers. But a lot of times that’s just an empty statement. In practice, different governments interfere. And, of course, FIFA negotiates and partners with them in different ways.

At the beginning of the championship, Neuer, Germany’s goalkeeper, was banned from wearing a captain’s band with the rainbow flag, which was an implicit protest against the Qatari government’s persecution of homosexuality and the way in which the rights of the LGBT+ community are curtailed. The German players settled the argument by covering their mouths in the official photo before the first game. They did not repeat the gesture in the following: the organization called them to order and many of their compatriots reproached them and blamed that small gesture for the defeat against Japan.

Before the start of the World Cup, business as usual happened. The focus was on Qatar. The leaders of the countries want to organize these major sporting events with the hope of improving their international image. But they hardly ever succeed. What they achieve is to put a giant magnifying glass on the problems and inequities of their country and making them known to those who would never have paid attention to that nation, unless it becomes the venue for a World Cup.

In 1962, with a lot of effort, Chile organized the seventh World Cup. “Since we have nothing, we will do everything,” said Carlos Dittborn, the president of the organizing committee. The Italian special envoys to the event wrote unfavorable chronicles about the country’s economic and social situation. This caused the climate of chauvinism to grow and that when Italy and Chile faced each other in a decisive instance, the party turned into a massacre: The Battle of Santiago was called.

Something similar happened to the Argentine military in 1978. They wanted to give an image to the world of prosperity, of a land of peace. What they achieved was that everywhere they paid attention to the Argentine Case, which until then had not been widely disseminated in the European and North American press (in the United States it was key, when months later, the Timerman Case became known). For that, the boycott committees that were formed in different European countries were fundamental, which failed to stop any team or player from participating in the World Cup. But their achievement was greater: they effectively and massively disseminated what was happening in Argentina. Following the 78 World Cup, human rights violations and their brutal magnitude became known all over the world. It was also the occasion when the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo gained international importance for the first time.

Something similar happened in Qatar. The world fixed its eyes on the small oil country and learned about its lack of freedoms, the autocratic regime, the persecution of homosexuals, the mistreatment of the workers who built the stadiums and the absence of safety measures at work that caused many deaths.

There is talk of Sportwashing, of using a World Cup or an Olympic Game to improve the image of a country, to favor the position of a government, to cover up its real problems. But it almost never happens. In general, what football achieves with its power is to put a big spotlight on everything it touches, to expose everything that comes close to it and to multiply attention.

The downside of this phenomenon is that as soon as the first game begins, as soon as the ball comes into play, everything else seems secondary. The protests are quiet, the unrest over inequities is quieting down, interest in anything other than football is dispelling. And we all follow the parties and the different defining bodies, forgetting the other issues.

The Iranian regime executed an opponent a few days ago. It was a shocking public event because of its barbarism. The images were disseminated to achieve the desired disciplining effect on its population. A man hanging in the air, lifeless, wobbling from the top of a huge crane.

Other death sentences have been reported in recent days. One of those sentenced to the gallows is Amir Nazr-Azadani, a 26-year-old soccer player. He was accused of having committed the crime of Moharebeh, which translates to having incurred “enmity with God”. A Moharebeh is an enemy of God. Amir had participated in the demonstrations that took place in recent months for women’s rights after the death of Mahsa Amini. His crime was being an opponent, trying to make his voice heard. After the international protests, the Iranian government argued that the player had participated in an action that ended with the death of three agents of the Iranian security forces: not one of the evidence used is known and the process was far from normal and from giving the accused the possibility of defense. In recent months, the crackdown on protests has caused around 500 deaths and thousands of arrests. The Iranian regime went one step further in recent weeks: it began public executions. Amir Nazr-Azadani is one of those waiting on the gallows.

Several sports legends raised their voices. A change.org was opened that has already collected thousands of signatures to oppose its execution. But with the big event of football in the final stages, with all the world’s attention on them, a big gesture from FIFA is required, a definitive condemnation action with sanctions included. This is not the time to look the other way.

Because silence and indifference are transformed into complicity. He is not the first Iranian player sentenced to death. Iran’s first World Cup participation was in 1978. In Argentina, he tied one game and lost another two. The squad was missing a player who at some point in the qualifiers had been the team’s captain: Habib Khabiri. Later, in 1984, his past as captain of the national team did not save Khabibi. He was brutally tortured and then publicly executed for opposing the regime. He was 29 years old.

In the eighth minute of every match of this World Cup, Iranian dissidents scattered in Qatari stadiums sang with fervor. The officials, the fanatics sent by the current government, tried to silence them with nationalist songs. Those protesting remembered Ali Karimi, the great star of Iranian football from the past decade.

Karimi was once called the Maradona of Asia. He went on to play for Bayern Munich and scored 38 goals for his national team. Karimi was sentenced in absentia by the Iranian authorities. His crime was to support the protests that took place in the streets of the country after the death of Mahsa Amini and to demand freedom for his compatriots. Karimi lives in Dubai. There, he was granted special custody because of the death threats he received after his demonstrations.

Karimi did what FIFA didn’t. He took advantage of his fame to make the situation in Iran known, to spread human rights violations, persecutions and state crimes.

The international attention and indignation generated by Amir Nazr-Azadani’s death sentence was multiplied by his past as a soccer player. Football has that propagating power that FIFA should take advantage of in addition to organizing that global party that is a World Cup, to try to ensure that these state crimes receive the sentences they deserve. An official statement by the agency and sanctions against the offending country could have an effect on the Iranian population that other measures would not.

But on these occasions FIFA prefers to shut up and look the other way. The silence is ominous. He prefers to pay attention to the intensity of the player’s complaints to the actions of the referees. In those cases, only in those cases, it is severe.ç