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Taekwondo Champ Exiled to Europe: "I'll Always be Iranian"

February 10, 2021
Florencia Montaruli
5 min read
In December 2012 athlete Raheleh Asemani made the difficult decision not to return home to Iran
In December 2012 athlete Raheleh Asemani made the difficult decision not to return home to Iran
The taekwondo practitioner has gone from strength to strength in Europe and gained Belgian citizenship just in time to compete in the 2016 Rio Olympic Games
The taekwondo practitioner has gone from strength to strength in Europe and gained Belgian citizenship just in time to compete in the 2016 Rio Olympic Games
Asemani has defied the sporting edicts of her homeland by both competing against an Israeli and doing so without hijab
Asemani has defied the sporting edicts of her homeland by both competing against an Israeli and doing so without hijab

Challenging the prescribed boundaries can be exhilarating, but it can also change our own lives forever.  If anyone knows this first-hand it is Raheleh Asemani, an Iranian Taekwondo athlete who defied the Iranian regime twice: first by competing against an Israeli athlete, and second by doing it without wearing the hijab.

To this day, Asemani is haunted by the fear of returning to Iran. She loves her homeland but now fears retaliation. Her remarkable career, her strength and courage, have been traced by the Argentine journalist Tomás Padilla and condensed in this article for IranWire.

"If I go to Iran, they won’t accept me," Raheleh Asemani says in Flag and Family, an Olympic Channel documentary that tells the stories of the lives and identities of Olympians. Asemani was 23 years old when she decided to go into exile in Antwerp, Belgium, because she felt trapped by the rules constraining Iranian taekwondo. It was December 2012. Her ostensibly month-long stay at her aunt's house was extended indefinitely.

In the final of the Netherlands Open, now a member of the Belgian delegation, Asemani then faced an Israeli athlete, which Iran forbids its athletes from doing. Furthermore, she did it without wearing the hijab, in defiance of mandatory veiling in Iran.

The event sparked controversy in Iranian state-controlled, which described it as a "disgrace". As a result, Asemani did not dare to return home. “In Iran you can never be sure,” she told a Belgian newspaper, “and I am afraid of being arrested. I'm an athlete, and sports are separate from politics... right?”

A Rebirth in Belgium and the 2016 Rio Olympics

Raheleh Asemani had grown up in Karaj, northern Iran, and at the age of nine she was already practicing taekwondo. Step by step, she began to realize the dream of every athlete and strove to one day attend the Olympic Games.

In 2010, she took a big step and won the silver medal at the Asian Games. But it was not enough, and London 2012 came and went. After that Asemani left Iran and travelled to Belgium because Iranian rules prohibited her from training with men, which, she said, would have allowed her to become stronger and perfect her technique.

In Antwerp, Asemani found new purpose at the Wilrijk National Training Center. According to data released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, that year 3 million people had left their homelands all over the world in search of political asylum. Of these some 22,024 like Asemani had registered in the European Union.

Without documentation or a stable job, but with her mind set on her athletic goals, Asemani contacted Karim Dighou, the coach of the Belgian national taekwondo team, and Laurence Rase, director of the National Taekwondo Federation of Belgium. She began as an ordinary sparring partner with other taekwondo practitioners, but with her excellent physical condition and mental resilience went on to win the Netherlands Open.

In March 2016, Tomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, announced the creation of a new team of “Olympic Refugee Athletes” for sportsmen and women who wanted to compete without a flag. After four years as a refugee, and 17 years dedicated to taekwondo, Asemani seized the opportunity for retribution. She came first in the European Qualification Tournament in Istanbul, Turkey, wearing the dobok of the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF), and secured her ticket to Brazil for the Rio 2016 Olympics.

With her presence at the Olympic Games now assured, a new question emerged. Under whose banner would she compete?

In April that year, the issue was resolved as Asemani was finally granted Belgian citizenship. Both the IOC and WTF allowed her to compete for Belgium. Her new passport, logistically important but also emotionally symbolic, had a double meaning: she was no longer stateless, and also, she would be an Olympian for the first time.

"What could be more beautiful than having a country in the games?" she told AFP. From there she continued her successes and, in her first competition as a Belgian, she received the bronze medal at the European Championships in Montreux, Switzerland.

At the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Asemani won her first two matches before losing to Britain's Jade Jones. In the repechage, she could not quite beat the Egyptian Hedaya Wahba on the “gold point” –  in the fourth round, the athlete who scores two points first wins the fight – and so missed her chance at the podium, but did come fifth place in the under-57 kilograms category.

"First,” she told the Belgian daily Zontag after the match, “I had hoped to be in Rio; second, I had wanted to do my best, and I think I did. It was too difficult for me, mentally. I couldn't accept that I had lost on gold point.”

After the Olympics, Asemani briefly stepped away from taekwondo and returned her day job at Bpost: a post office where she had worked since 2015. But seven months later, she began training again because she missed her sport and decided, she said, that “her story was not over”.

Tokyo 2021 is now Asemani’s goal. She still wants to bring home a medal for Belgium, the country that welcomed her when she needed it. "There are many refugees with difficult life stories, but I think anyone can make their dreams come true."

Raheleh Asemani, A Symbol of the Sense of Belonging

In the context of Asemani’s impressive journey to date, the colors of the Belgian fIag seem to invite an analogy with taekwondo belts. In taekwondo, black represents maturity, which she had to attain at barely the age of 23. Yellow symbolizes the earth, where the plant and its roots sprout. Red warns against danger: such as that she had to overcome after her visit to the Netherlands to compete against an Israeli, without the hijab, in the Taekwondo Open.

Despite the 5,000 kilometres that separate Antwerp from Karaj, Raheleh Asemani has said she will always feel Iranian. She was born there and she landed her first blows there.  Ever since childhood sport taught her how to fight, both inside and outside the ring, and her sense of belonging is more important than any political regime, sport, or Olympic medal. “I started a new life,” she has said, “but I love Iran. It’s my land. I will always be Iranian”.

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