The Iranian footballers show what real courage looks like

Late on Monday evening, managers of the Iranian women’s football team were spotted running around their hotel in Australia’s Gold Coast. They were searching for missing players Fatemeh Pasandideh, Zahra Sarbali, Atefeh Ramazanzadeh, Mona Hamoudi and captain Zahra Ghanbari. All five, due to catch a flight the next day, were long gone.

It transpired that these brave women, who had come to Australia to participate in the AFC Women’s Asian Cup tournament, had been transported to a safe house by local security forces. There, at 1.30am on Tuesday, Australian immigration minister Tony Burke signed off on their emergency humanitarian visas. They will not be returning to Iran.

The news could not be more welcome – particularly for Iranian fans living in the West, who have rightly been raising concerns over the girls’ safety. Calls for Australian authorities to ‘save our girls’ began two days after the assassination of supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, when several members of the team neglected to sing their country’s national anthem before a fixture against South Korea. This was no small act of defiance. The members’ refusal to sing earned them the title ‘wartime traitors’ from one Iranian state-television presenter. Back home, treason is an offence punishable by death.

When the team were knocked out of the tournament on Sunday, Iranian fans surrounded their bus, draped in Iran’s unofficial, pre-Islamic Republic flag. The fans banged against the windows and chanted, ‘Let them go’. Some reports, though unconfirmed, suggested team members inside the bus made hand gestures to indicate distress. However, given that they were accompanied at all times by minders from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, it would have been difficult to communicate anything more.

Even US president Donald Trump called on Australian PM Anthony Albanese to do the right thing. ‘The US will take them if you won’t’, he said simply. Burke informed the press on Tuesday that as he had signed the asylum documents for Pasandideh, Sarbali, Ramazanzadeh, Hamoudi and Ghanbari, the women had broken out into spontaneous chants of ‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi!’.

This really should be a moment of immense pride Down Under. It is difficult to think of a more deserving asylum case. To contrast the image of these women on the pitch, hair covered by uniform hijabs and performing a military salute, against that of them smiling beside Burke, having been granted refuge, says it all. The group has already received an offer to train with Brisbane Roar, an A-League women’s football team. Their visa will allow them both to work and study in the country.

The future is less clear for those members of the team who did not opt to leave the hotel. Early this morning, their bus was seen heading for Gold Coast Airport. Several protesters did their best to physically block the vehicle from passing. Though Burke has made it clear that they are ‘welcome to stay in the country’ too, it appears the clock is ticking.

As for the five who are now free of the barbarous, woman-hating theocracy they once had to call home, we should commend their courage. They have shown the Islamic Republic and the West alike that ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ is far from a passing slogan. On the contrary, the movement for women’s liberation is only just getting started.

Georgina Mumford is a content producer at spiked.