The Summer Olympics are typically time for nations around the world to come together for a greater cause. Athletes representing their countries. Adversaries competing against one another on the world’s grandest of stages.
The Olympics also bring up what is happening around the globe. Right now, that includes the Russia-Ukraine war and Israel’s battle with Hamas.
However, there is also another major backdrop here. The war-torn nation of Afghanistan is represented by a six-member team — three men and three women. It’s a symbolic show of “gender equality” under the oppressive Taliban regime.
American’s know full well the situation in Afghanistan. The United States started its pull out of the Middle Eastern nation back in 2020, with it concluding the following year. This came after a war that lasted more than two decades following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. The pull out ceaded power to the Taliban in the process.
We’re now hearing from one of the Afghani women competing at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. Her message is clear.
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Afghanistan Sprinter At Summer Olympics: ‘Education. Sport. Our Rights’
Afghan sprinter Kimia Yousofi finished last in her 100-meter heat late last week. But that’s not the story. She could be seen holding a hand-written note with the message, “Education. Sport. Our Rights.”
“I am fighting for a land where the terrorists came. If they get into your house, you say, ‘OK, get out, this is my house.’ What should I feel? They took my land,” Yousofi said after the race, via CNN. “No one in Afghanistan recognizes them as the government. No one. They cannot talk. I can talk.”
According to the United Nations, Afghanistan is the most oppressive country in the world under the Taliban. Since returning to power in 2021, it has closed secondary schools for girls, banned women from attending college, disabled a woman’s ability to travel without a male chaperone and banned them from certain public spaces.
As for Yousofi, she relocated from to Australia in 2022 to train for the Summer Olympics. But this does not mean that her heart is not with those suffering in Afghanistan right now.
It’s one of the sobering backdrops as the Summer Olympics continue in France.
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