IranVNC - Tehran’s Law Enforcement Force [LEF] today denied a report that a number of women were allowed to enter Tehran’s Azadi stadium on Wednesday to watch a soccer match between two male teams. They further denied that there was a likelihood that women may be allowed to be onlookers in stadiums.
Iranian law prohibits female spectators to attend stadiums and arenas where men are competing.
In his first year in office, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad supported easing the ban on women’s presence in stadiums, but he soon had to retreat in the face of strong reaction from highly placed clergymen.
Yesterday, the conservative Jomhouri Eslami newspaper criticized Ahmadinejad’s government, saying: “Sports officials have taken the first step to materialize rumors of allowing women into stadiums.”
The daily added: “Yesterday, midway through a contest between Tehran’s Pirouzi [also known as Persepolis] and the Esteqlal of Ahvaz, at the Azadi Stadium in Tehran, a number of women coaches of the national women’s team, including an American coach, entered the reporters’ box and watched the match at a close range.”
Ali Baba’i, the commander of the Imam Khomeini Brigade, the special unit of Tehran’s Law Enforcement Force at Tehran’s Olympic Stadium, yesterday strongly denied the report, telling the semi-official Mehr News Agency: “Only one foreign female coach attended, and the attendance of a number of women at this game is strongly denied.”
Baba’i added: “The presence of this female coach, who was a foreign soccer coach, took place on the basis of an arrangement coordinated with the Physical Education Department and the stadium management. And this does not contravene with the laws of the Islamic Republic.”
Sources: Jomhouri Eslami newspaper, Mehr News Agency