Taliban fail to stop two Afghan athletes Paralympic Dreams
The Taliban have failed to stop two Afghanistan athletes arriving in Japan late Saturday to compete in their chosen events next week at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.
Hopes of any Afghans competing at Tokyo 2020 appeared to have been dashed when Islamist group the Taliban swept to power in Afghanistan, forcing all commercial flights to be cancelled as people scrambled to leave the country. On Aug. 16, the Afghanistan Paralympic Committee said the athletes would not compete due to the unrest following the Taliban takeover.
Ten years had passed since Afghanistan’s Paralympic Committee president had eleven bullets fired into his upper body, neck and face by the Taliban and was left for dead. Now the Taliban are back killing the dreams of Afghanistan athletes, particularly women.
The Taliban see women’s sport as un-Islamic and its return to power is likely to be disastrous for women’s sport in Afghanistan. When the Taliban previously held power between 1996 and 2001, Afghanistan was banned from participating in the Olympics because of the militants’ discrimination against women and prohibition of sports of any kind.
Although there were no Afghan athletes present in Tokyo for the start of the Games, as a show of solidary the Afghan flag was flown in the Tokyo Paralympics Games’ opening ceremony in a poignant display Tuesday — despite most of the country’s athletes being unable to get to Tokyo to compete after the Taliban takeover.
Nonetheless, Afghanistan’s Paralympians Zakia Khudadadi and Hossain Rasouli were evacuated last weekend to France from the Taliban-controlled country in a “major global operation”, the International Paralympic Committee said.
“Zakia and Hossain have continued to express their absolute desire to come and compete at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games,” the committee’s chief Andrew Parsons said in a statement.
They “are now in Tokyo to fulfil their dreams, sending out a strong message of hope to many others around the world”, he added.
Following their arrival in the Japanese capital at 6pm local time last night, after a top-secret flight from Paris following their evacuation from Kabul, Khudadadi and Rasouli were transported to the Paralympic Village where they were met by IPC President Andrew Parsons and Chelsey Gotell, chair of the organisation’s Athletes’ Council.
Zakia Khudadadi will be Afghanistan’s first female athlete to participate at the Games since Athens 2004. She due to compete in the women’s taekwondo K44 -49kg category on 2nd September. Khudadadi, who was born with a disability, won the first African 2016 Para-Taekwondo Championships in Egypt when she was 18. She took up taekwondo after watching her compatriot Rohullah Nikpai win the bronze at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2012 London Games.
In a video message from Kabul on Aug. 17, she said: “I urge you all, from the women around the globe, institutions for the protection of women, from all government organizations, to not let the rights of a female citizen of Afghanistan in the Paralympic movement to be taken away so easily.”
She added: “I request from you all that I am an Afghan woman and as a representative of Afghan women ask for you to help me.”
“The fact that we ourselves have lifted ourselves from this situation, that we have achieved so much, it cannot be taken lightly. I have suffered a lot, I don’t want my struggle to be in vain and without any results. Help me,” Khudadadi said.
Hossain Rasouli who lost part of his left arm in a mine explosion, will be making his Paralympic debut in Tokyo as a track athlete when he lines up in the men’s 400m category T47 on 3rd September.
He told the Paralympics website that it was “a dream” to be participating in the Tokyo Games and that he wanted to win a medal for his country.
