{"id":5868,"date":"2016-10-12T22:56:51","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T03:56:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/?p=5868"},"modified":"2016-10-12T22:56:51","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T03:56:51","slug":"the-telegraph-the-west-should-learn-from-its-chess-players-refusal-to-pander-to-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/2016\/10\/12\/the-telegraph-the-west-should-learn-from-its-chess-players-refusal-to-pander-to-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"The Telegraph: The West should learn from its chess players’ refusal to pander to Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Iranian chess players Mitra Hejazipour (L) and Sara Khademalsharieh play at the Chess Federation in the capital Tehran on October 10, 2016. For the Iranian players the veil is not a sign of oppression, they oppose a campaign launched in the United States against the holding of the Women’s World Championship in February in Tehran Credit: AFP\/Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By: <\/span>The Telegraph<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0A<\/span> number of the world\u2019s leading women chess players have announced they won’t\u00a0attend the upcoming World Chess Championship in the Islamic Republic of Iran, because there they would be forced to wear a hijab. American chess star Nazi Paikidze incited controversy by letting go<\/a> her opportunity to win a world title.<\/div>\n

Controversy began in late September, after Iran was assigned the right to host the Women\u2019s World Chess Championship. “I think it’s unacceptable to host a women’s World Championship in a place where women do not have basic fundamental rights and are treated as second-class citizens.<\/a>” Paikidze declared on Instagram. Her call for a boycott evoked mixed comments. World Chess Federation FIDE reacted with the usual platitudes that women should respect cultural differences in other countries.<\/p>\n

What then with women rights? Are they not to be respected? That FIDE assigned the World Championship to Iran without paying attention to discrimination of women only vindicates\u00a0Islamists in their conviction.<\/p>\n

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P<\/span>ersia may well be the cradle of chess (in many languages the word for chess is derived from the Persian word for king, sh\u0101h), to returning the mind game home the Islamic Republic of Iran has imposed one important condition: accepting the compulsory Hijab<\/a>. In February, with the World Championship taking place and with several international female players being forced to wear headscarves, thousands of Iranian women will be arrested and interrogated in the streets of Tehran by Iran\u2019s vice squad because their hijabs don\u2019t cover their hair properly.<\/p>\n

That is why according to official reports of Iran\u2019s Ministry of the Interior a million of files are opened yearly. In the first six months of 2015, about 40,000 cars were confiscated because drivers or passengers were not wearing their headscarves properly.<\/p>\n

Many women were pulled and beaten on the ground, just to be arrested afterwards. Many gruesome images of these daily atrocities in the name of a fundamentalist religious dictatorship circulate on the internet. To maintain this mass oppression Tehran\u2019s police corps was enlarged with 7,000 under cover agents last spring.<\/p>\n

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I<\/span>ranian women\u2019s civil disobedience by ignoring the imposed rules on clothing is clear proof of their unwillingness to abide by regulations enforced by the religious regime. Moreover, it makes clear that the mandatory hijab is not part of Iran\u2019s culture, as the ayatollahs and FIDE alike try to make us believe.<\/p>\n

FIDE\u2019s and other sport organizations\u2019 shameful cultural relativism is carried on by international politics and diplomacy. If Western women, when going to Iran, are forced to cover their heads \u201cout of respect for the ayatollahs\u201d (unfortunately not for Iranian women), then why do top officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran not have to pay respect to the Western culture when going there? Concessions to Islamism do not belong in the free Western culture and we have to inhibit them by all means.<\/p>\n

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<< Chess<\/span> | FIDE\u2019s stance on tackling discrimination<\/span><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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Fide Statute 1.2<\/span><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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FIDE is concerned exclusively with chess activities. FIDE is democratically established and bases itself on the principles of equal rights of its members. FIDE is a non-profit making organisation. It rejects discriminatory treatment for national, political, racial, social or religious reasons or on account of gender. It observes strict neutrality in the internal affairs of the national chess federations.<\/span><\/h5>\n
FIDE events (competitions, congresses, meetings) may be hosted only by Federations where free access is generally assured to representatives of all Federations.<\/span><\/h5>\n
The General Assembly may take exceptions for reasons of state of war or severe violence between countries, only on a three quarter majority vote.<\/span><\/h5>\n
>><\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n

That is why it surprises me to see Western women, opinion-makers and organizations openly seized with emotion by a Muslim woman apparently being forced by police officers to take off her burkini on a Nice beach<\/a>\u00a0after she chose\u00a0not to leave the beach, but not expressing their sympathy for the many Iranian women who want to throw off their headscarves. As a former victim of Iran\u2019s oppressing and misogynistic regime, this is the world upside down to me.<\/p>\n

In these dark days of spreading Islamism, I am grateful for the few chess players who do want to back Iranian women and refuse to renounce their own values. When will the ladies and gentlemen in power follow their example?<\/p>\n

Darya Safai is a\u00a0human rights activist and sports fan<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: The Telegraph \u00a0A number of the world\u2019s leading women chess players have announced they won’t\u00a0attend the upcoming World Chess Championship in the Islamic Republic […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5869,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,37,36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5868"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5868"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5870,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5868\/revisions\/5870"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}