“It was a surreal moment, my heart started pounding,” Zakia Khudadadi, 25, said of the moment she “threw her helmet and mouthguard in the air” after beating Turkey’s Ekinci Nurcihan in the women’s taekwondo competition on Thursday in Paris at the 2024 Paralympic Games.
Fox News reported that Khudadadi was “smuggled out” of Afghanistan during the final days of the deadly 2021 withdrawal, which killed 13 U.S. troops, to Paris and then to Tokyo in time to compete in the Tokyo Paralympics, held from August 24 to September 5, 2021. She feared that a Taliban takeover of her home country would likely mean restrictions on women would prevent her from competing in the sport she loves.
VIDEO — Trump releases video commemorating third anniversary of Afghanistan attack, tearing apart Kamala:
Donald J. Trump / Social Truth
Born without a forearm, the Aghan native did not return to her home country. Instead, Khudadadi joined the Refugee Paralympic Team, which at this year’s Paris 2024 Games is comprised of eight athletes and a guide runner “representing more than 120 million forcibly displaced people around the world,” the team’s website says.
“I was told that if I stayed, the Taliban would come for me because I was an athlete who disobeyed their rules. (…) I had only one choice: to leave,” she said before the Paris Games,” CNN reported.
The Taliban, who marked the third anniversary of their takeover of Afghanistan on August 14 with a grand military victory parade, announced on August 22 their new “Vice and Virtue” law, which requires women to cover their entire bodies, including their faces, speak softly and not leave the house without a male guardian, in accordance with Sharia law.
Taliban military vehicles are displayed during a military parade to mark the third anniversary of the withdrawal of U.S.-led troops from Afghanistan at Bagram Air Base in Parwan province, Afghanistan, Aug. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Siddiqullah Alizai)
The new restrictions on Afghan women contradict promises made by Taliban leaders when they took power in 2021 to include their people. “We will do everything possible to include everyone in the country, even those who were against us in the past, so we will wait for these announcements to be made,” senior spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in the days after the fall of Kabul.
But Khudadadi and her fellow athletes offer hope for the future of those facing persecution. “I have had to endure so much to get here,” she said. “This medal is for all the women of Afghanistan and all the refugees in the world. I hope that one day there will be peace in my country.”
Khudadadi plans to compete in the 2028 Los Angeles Paralympics.
Breitbart News
