Instead of pride, many Iranian-Americans feel shame about the Iranian team’s participation in the World Cup and are demanding that FIFA remove the country from the competition, protesters said on Wednesday.
The team’s presence is outraging many who see the Iranian government as using the competition to sportswash its killing of dissidents since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Protesters said many thousands have been killed over the years, including during widespread demonstrations in January, and that hundreds of athletes have been among the victims.
“Bringing them here and having them play basically presents a calm face to the world, when in fact back home there is no calmness, there’s only execution and suffering that the regime has brought,” said 21-year-old American-born Ryan Salami, whose parents both fled Iran, in an interview at a protest in front of Los Angeles City Hall.
Many protesters backed the National Council of Resistance of Iran’s call to remove Iran from the tournament. Photographs of dozens of Iranian athletes who died in government custody were displayed in an impromptu open-air gallery in front of Los Angeles City Hall. Speakers, including a number of former Iran national team players, mourned athletes whom they say died after opposing the government and being taken into custody.
Former players join criticism
“This is the ayatollahs’ team,” said Asghar Adibi, who was a member of the Iran national team in 1970, to the crowd. He said the team was controlled by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and that it was wrong to allow an organization “that kills people, tortures people, to have a team representing them.”
Protesters had a variety of views about whether the Iranian players themselves should be seen as part of the regime. Salami said he sympathized with players who might simply be athletes needing to stay silent and obedient to avoid the fate of previous players who have pushed back.
Another protester told Reuters that the IRGC would only allow loyal followers onto the team because she believed it would not want to risk defections, and therefore the players should be seen as little better than collaborators.
‘Players used like tools’
Another protester said the players were being used like tools to help the Iranian government look good on the world stage and that the players deserved little pity.
“They are all attached to the regime in some way,” said Peymaneh Shafi, who said she became an opponent of the Iranian government after gunmen shot her teacher in front of her. “These are the real athletes,” she said, pointing to photographs of athletes persecuted by the Iranian government.
After the rally, which included speeches and calls for regime change in Tehran, protesters marched through the park beside City Hall.
FIFA and Iran’s national team did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
The Iranian team has said that it will stop playing if banned flags or critical slogans appear at matches.
Will Iranian-Americans try to sneak the pre-revolution lion-and-sun Iranian flag into SoFi Stadium and unfurl it when Iran plays?
“100%,” said Nasrin Saifi, who arrived in the United States one year before the Iranian Revolution when she was 17.
In 1998, she smuggled a T-shirt bearing the banned flag into a World Cup match between the United States and Iran in Lyon, France.
She has a ticket for Iran’s first match on Monday in Los Angeles, but is not sure whether she will attend.
