Fashion publications often look at the Olympic Games as if they were a runway show, checking out just the uniforms of the various teams, rather than the athletic performances. Yet the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games provided us with some great lessons that went beyond sports and fashionable uniforms.
The 2020 Summer Paralympics in Tokyo are currently on (until 5th September 2021) and, as the situation in Afghanistan develops and more refugees are leaving from Kabul airport, there is one small multi-cultural team at the Games, that is reshifting the attention on the estimated 82 million refugees in the world - Refugee Paralympic Team - comprising 6 refugee and asylee Paralympic athletes.
Sports can truly rebuild a life and the team reunites displaced athletes who have survived war, persecution, exile, violence, hunger and disabilities. One of them, Mohammad Abbas Karimi (first picture in this post, credit: Getty Images / Michael Reaves), fled Afghanistan to pursue his dream of becoming a swimming champion.
Born without arms in Kabul, Karimi was bullied in school and was often angry about his condition. Hope in his life came from a swimming pool built by his brother for a community near Karimi's home. Getting in the water calmed his anger and made him feel protected. Yet, knowing that it would have been difficult to train in Afghanistan, Karimi fled his home country at 16. He reached Iran and, from there, after a daring and dangerous journey, he arrived in Turkey. Between 2013 and 2016 he lived in refugee camps and eventually managed to leave when Mike Ives, a retired teacher and former wrestling coach in the United States saw a video Karimi posted on Facebook.
Working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Ives put together the documentation Karimi needed and helped him resettling in Portland, USA. Karimi was the first refugee to win an international medal when he won silver in the 50m butterfly S5 event at the Mexico 2017 World Para Swimming Championship. Since then Karimi moved to Florida to continue his career and now he’s competing in the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.
Others who trained hard to be in the Games didn't manage to make it this time: Nilofar Bayat, 26, captain of Afghanistan's female national wheelchair basketball team, managed to flee from Kabul and reach Spain with other refugees just a few days ago. In Afghanistan Bayat played basketball, but also campaigned for women's rights and for the rights of women with disabilities and, fearing she may have been targeted and killed by the Taliban, she had to flee the country. Some of the players in Bayat's team are war-wounded like Bayat who was severely injured when a rocket hit her family’s house in Kabul when she was just a toddler, others are amputees or paraplegic.
Bayat and her team started competing internationally in 2017 at the Bali Cup and since then they fought against many prejudices. Having a disability and being women playing basketball meant they were often subjected to insults. Yet they kept on playing and fighting for their rights: before the Taliban quickly regained power this month, there were over 100 female basketball players in different cities in Afghanistan, many of them hoping to become Paralympic champions (the Wheelchair Basketball Federation of Afghanistan was recognized in 2014). Now Bayat is safe in Bilbao where both she and her husband (from Afghanistan’s men's national wheelchair basketball team) were selected to join the city's teams.
There was also a Refugee Olympic Team at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and it featured 29 athletes competing in 12 sports. They didn't win any medals, but some of the team's athletes, such as Masomah Ali Zada, are considered as pioneers in their sports.
Born in Afghanistan, she spent her early years in exile in Iran while the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. In Iran her father taught her and her sister to ride a bicycle. After her return to Kabul, she went to high school and university. Despite disapproval from more conservative Afghans who thought it was disrespectful for women to ride in public, she started cycling with a group of other young women who were often targeted while cycling.
In 2016 French TV channel Arte did a documentary called "Les Petites Reines de Kaboul" (The Little Queens of Kabul) featuring Masomah and her fellow athletes, showing the team training in the Afghan capital despite being threatened by those who believe women cycling is immoral. In the same year, Masomah left Afghanistan with her family and claimed asylum in France. She is now studying civil engineering at the university in Lille, where she lives with her sister Zahra.
In Tokyo she competed as part of the Refugee Olympic Team not just to try and win a medal, but to put under the spotlight women's empowerment in Afghanistan and inspire others. Even before the Taliban regained ground and power just a couple of weeks ago, riding a bicycle for a woman was seen as an act of defiance and a political statement and female cyclists were often verbally and physically attacked.
Yet, despite disapproval, cycling became a popular sport in Afghanistan among women and the cycling federation counted over 200 women, plus seven women’s provincial teams and an annual women’s race. These women passionate about cycling, such as Rukhsar Habibzai, Captain of Afghanistan's women national cycling team and founder of the women-only Cheetah cycling club, were often considered symbols of peace and freedom. Yet, in the last few weeks, as US troops started leaving, many of the female cyclists in Afghanistan weren't able to train anymore on the long-distance tracks as they didn't feel safe.
There's actually a lot of concern around the women's cycling team as former Italian cyclist Alessandra Cappellotto tried to get out of Kabul with the help of the association Road to Equality twenty-five girls from the team, those ones with more recognisable and prominent profiles on social media, as they may have been targeted by the Taliban. At the moment, though, we do not know if she managed to also because there were suicide bombing attacks at Kabul International Airport today (Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks), with explosions at the Abbey gate and near the Baron hotel. So, for the time being, we can only hope they are safe and will maybe join one day the Refugee Olympic Team.
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