The Iranian soccer staff's gamers selected to not sing their nation's nationwide anthem earlier than their opening match in opposition to England on Monday on the World Cup in Qatar, in obvious solidarity with protesters again residence. As Iran's nationwide anthem performed at Khalifa Worldwide Stadium, tv cameras confirmed the beginning gamers standing stoically, however not singing.
Iran misplaced the match to England, 6-2.
Previous to the sport, staff captain Alireza Jahanbakhsh stated he and his teammates would determine "collectively" whether or not they would take a stand in the course of the anthem in help of the anti-government protests.
Within the staff's pleasant match in opposition to Nicaragua on November 11, many of the gamers declined to sing the anthem, AFP reported.
Earlier than the gesture, the staff had misplaced help from their fellow Iranians after assembly with Iran's hardline President Ebrahim Raisi, Holly Dagres, a senior fellow on the Atlantic Council and an Iranian-American nationwide, informed CBS Information correspondent Roxana Saberi.
Dagres stated that whereas the staff remaining silent in the course of the Islamic Republic's nationwide anthem "could appear very important, many Iranians have been already disillusioned within the staff's conduct in the course of the previous week."
Along with the assembly with Raisi, Dagres stated photographs displaying the gamers celebrating their World Cup entry, as "protesters have been being slain within the streets by safety forces," left many Iranians to view their staff "as not consultant of them, however of the clerical institution."
Masih Alinejad, a New York-based activist from Iran, went additional in her condemnation of the staff.
"Iran is the one nation within the World Cup that its folks need their nationwide soccer staff to lose because the staff would not symbolize the folks however the regime," she wrote.
Not less than 419 protesters have been killed since September, together with 60 youngsters, and greater than 17,000 folks have been arrested, in accordance with the Iranian Human Rights Activists Information Company's newest statistics. The protests have rocked Iran because the killing in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini on September 16.
Initially led by girls, the protests have grown into essentially the most important anti-government demonstrations the regime has confronted because it got here to energy within the 1979 Islamic Revolution.