Her crime? Six months earlier, she had gone to the Azadi to watch her team play. She set herself on fire outside a Tehran court upon learning she faced six months in prison. Sahar Khodayari, known as the Blue Girl after the colours of her team Esteghlal, died in September 2019 with 90 per cent burns. “It comes after lots of physical harassment and even the death of a female fan.” “The opening of stadiums in Iran is a result of two decades of campaigning constantly against the regime and religious clerics who are anti-women’s rights,” Sara (not her real name) of Open Stadiums says. Open Stadiums, a movement of Iranian women which seeks to end discrimination, welcomed the move. “Combined with FIFA’s pressing, it made it much harder for authorities to justify this arbitrary and discriminatory ban.” She pays tribute to the persistence of women as well as sports fans, teams and athletes. “The general sentiment is: ‘finally.’ This should have happened a long time ago,” says Tara Sepehri Far of Human Rights Watch. There is still far to go but in December 3,000 women stepped on to the upper tiers of the cavernous Azadi Stadium to watch the Tehran derby between the twin giants of Persepolis and Esteghlal. It’s been a long road from the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and the start of the ban on women from watching football at stadiums, to allowing access to the female half of a football-loving population.
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