To get a feel for the real race The Lonely Woman in Afghanistan At the Olympic athletics competition, all you had to do was look at the back of your bib.
On this sheet, written by hand, were the following words: “Education” and “Our rights”.
Women and Girls in Afghanistan have suffered greatly since Kimia Yousofi’s home country was taken over by the Taliban in August 2021. A United Nations report last year said the country has become the most repressive in the world against women and girls, who are deprived of virtually all of their basic rights.
Martin Meissner / AP
“I think I feel responsible to the Afghan girls because they can’t speak,” Yousofi said Friday after finishing last in her 100-meter heat.
His 13.42-second sprint on the track wasn’t the main point of that journey. Yousofi’s story is a bracing illustration of how these journeys Olympic Games It’s not always about winning or losing.
“I am not a politician, I just do what I think is right,” Yousofi said. “I can talk to the media. I can be the voice of Afghan girls. I can tell people what they want: they want basic rights, education and sports.”
Before she was born, Yousofi’s parents fled Afghanistan under Taliban rule. She and her three brothers were born and raised in neighboring Iran.
In 2012, at the age of 16, Yousofi participated in a talent search for Afghan immigrant girls living in Iran. She then returned to Afghanistan to train for a chance to represent the country at the 2016 Olympics. This will be her third Games.
But after the Taliban took back his countryAround the time the Tokyo Games began, she moved to Australia with the help of local officials and the International Olympic Committee. She lives in Sydney, trying to improve her English. When she returns, she will begin looking for a job.
If she had looked for one, she would almost certainly have earned a spot on the list. Refugee Olympic Team which is designed for displaced athletes like her.
But she wanted to represent her country, with all its flaws, in the hope that this trip to the Olympics would help shine a light on how women are treated there.
“This is my flag, this is my country,” she said. “This is my land.”
On June 8, it had been 1,000 days since the Taliban banned girls over the age of 12 from entering all schools in Afghanistan. Despite the risks, many Afghan girls have refused to lose hopeand they turned to unofficial schools, hidden from the Taliban, to continue receiving an education.
But while some young women find ways around the Taliban’s repression, Afghanistan is expected to continue to see many educated and professional women flee to countries with greater opportunities.
“Afghanistan will never fully recover from these 1,000 days,” Heather Barr, deputy women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement in June. “The potential lost during this time—the artists, doctors, poets, and engineers who will never be able to use their skills to serve their country—cannot be replaced. With each additional day, more dreams are extinguished.”
Ahmad Mukhtar contributed to this report.
