Iran loses its only female Olympic medalist

One News reports:

Iran’s only female Olympic medallist said she defected from the Islamic Republic in a blistering online letter that describes herself as “one of the millions of oppressed women in Iran.”

Taekwondo athlete Kimia Alizadeh posted the letter on Instagram as Iran’s semiofficial ISNA news agency said she had fled to the Netherlands. She criticised wearing the mandatory hijab headscarf and accused officials in Iran of sexism and mistreatment.

“Whatever they said, I wore,” Alizadeh wrote in the letter posted Saturday. “Every sentence they ordered, I repeated.”

She described the decision to leave Iran as difficult, but necessary.

Good on her. Most Iranians are wonderful people. They just have a theocratic authoritarian Government that imposes its will on them, rather than serves them.

Hopefully one day Iran will be free. The backlash to the shooting down of the plane may play a part.