DOHA (Reuters) – Players of Iran’s national football team refrained from singing their national anthem on Monday as their World Cup opener kicked off against England in Doha, Qatar, in a apparent show of support for the protests that have rocked the country since September.
Iran has been traversed by a vast protest movement since the death, on September 16, of the young Kurdish Mahsa Amini, arrested in Tehran by the morality police for having broken the dress code on wearing the veil in public.
The move is seen as one of the biggest challenges to Tehran’s theocratic rule since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
State television censored footage of the players lining up before the match as the anthem was played during its live broadcast.
The national team has lost supporters at home, however, with many Iranians accusing it of siding with the state-led crackdown on protesters, including women and children.
The football team, historically a great source of national pride, has caught the eye in Iran ahead of the World Cup, hoping players could use the event as a platform to show solidarity with the protesters.
Captain Ehsan Hajsafi, who plays in Greece, is the first member of the Iranian team to speak out since the start of the World Cup on the situation in his country. “We are with them. And we support them. And we have sympathy for them,” he said on the eve of Iran’s first game.
(Reporting Martin Petty, written by William Maclean; French version Diana Mandiá, editing by Kate Entringer)
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