India should not support Afghan cricket team at the cost of Afghan women, normalising Taliban, says exiled sportswoman

Even as the Afghan cricket team wins accolades for its performance in the ICC Champion’s Cup Trophy in Pakistan, 22-year-old Olympics athlete Marzieh Hamidi faces death threats for calling for a boycott against the team. Ms. Hamidi, who fled from Afghanistan in 2021 after the Taliban regime took over, says the ICC must enforce its rule against recognising cricketing countries that don’t have both men’s and women’s teams. In addition, she says that teams promoted by the Taliban should be boycotted, as South African teams once were, given that the Taliban regime practices “gender apartheid”, banning women and girls from education, sports, and all outdoor activities. 

Speaking to The Hindu on the sidelines of the Herat Security Dialogue held in Madrid, where she gave a speech about her campaign called ‘Let Us Exist’, Ms. Hamidi, a taekwondo champion who was Afghanistan’s flag-bearer at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, now lives with police protection in France.
source:thehindu.com