By PAYAM YOUNESIPOUR

IranWire

Yekta Jamali’s disappearance during the 2022 World Weightlifting Championships in Greece made headlines in Iranian media.

At just 17, she had made history as the first Iranian woman to win a world weightlifting medal at the Junior Championships.

After leaving Greece, she sought asylum in Germany and, by September 2024, at age 19, was winning international medals under the German flag.

Within 24 hours of Jamali’s disappearance becoming public, another prominent weightlifter, Parisa Jahanfekrian, announced that she, too, had sought asylum in Germany.

Jahanfekrian had earned Iran’s first-ever Olympic qualification in women’s weightlifting for the Tokyo Games.

“Hush. Girls don’t shout. This was the whisper constantly in our ears,” Jahanfekrian wrote on Instagram when announcing her decision.

“I silenced my cry, swallowed my grief, and hid my tears. I come from the forgotten half of Iran. I rise from the humiliated and restricted half of Iran. But I speak of a generation that did not believe in being forgotten. It did not accept being humiliated and restricted.”

In a subsequent interview with IranWire, she added, “The regime’s managers are happy that we are leaving Iran.”

By March 2024, Jahanfekrian had been invited to join the Olympic Refugee Team by the International Olympic Committee.

The trend continued in September 2024 when the Iranian Weightlifting Federation announced that Fatemeh Keshavarz, a 71kg lifter who had traveled to Spain for the World Championships, had disappeared.

Initially, some Iranian media circulated implausible claims from the federation suggesting she had been kidnapped, but Spanish police dismissed any such possibility.

Keshavarz, 21, from Marvdasht, had only begun weightlifting in 2020 but quickly rose through the ranks, winning a bronze medal in the senior category at the 2023 Asian Championships in South Korea.

At just 19, after gaining international recognition, she too left Iran behind.

These athletes are not leaving solely due to inadequate training conditions. Many are driven out by a culture that remains hostile to women in sports, especially those who challenge traditional gender roles.

When Jamali became the first Iranian female weightlifter to reach a world podium, Dariush Arjmand, an actor associated with state-controlled media and hardliner circles, publicly criticized women’s weightlifting.

The attacks continued when Mehdi Koochakzadeh, a conservative member of Iran’s parliament, posted photos of Jamali lifting weights alongside images of girls carrying knives in Isfahan.

He labeled her a “role model for knife-wielders,” claiming her athletic pursuits encouraged violence among girls >>>