Iran's only female Olympic medalist defects over 'lies' and 'injustice'

The only female athlete to win an Olympic medal for Iran announced this weekend that she had defected from the nation because of “hypocrisy, lies, injustice and flattery” and said she had been used as a “tool.”
 
The Olympian, Kimia Alizadeh (pictured), 21, announced her decision in an Instagram post accompanied by a photo from the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, where she won a bronze medal in taekwondo. “They took me wherever they wanted,” she wrote. “Whatever they said, I wore. Every sentence they ordered, I repeated.”
 
Her comments came during a time of especially heightened tensions in the country after the Iranian authorities announced this weekend that the country’s forces had unintentionally downed a passenger plane last week near Tehran, killing all 176 people on board. The admission prompted outrage in the country and set off a series of protests over the weekend.

Iran has also been embroiled in a simmering conflict with the United States after an American drone strike killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, a powerful Iranian commander, and Tehran retaliated with missile strikes on bases in Iraq that house American troops.

 
While Ms. Alizadeh’s statement did not refer to her country’s geopolitical troubles, she did address the “oppressed people of Iran” and pointed to restrictive policies on women’s public conduct and appearance, including the “obligatory veil.”

“My troubled spirit does not fit into your dirty economic channels and tight political lobbies,” she wrote. “I have no other wish except for taekwondo, security and a happy and healthy life.”

 
Ms. Alizadeh did not say where she was seeking asylum. But Iran’s semiofficial ISNA news agency reported that Ms. Alizadeh had moved to the Netherlands and noted that she had been absent from training for several days before releasing her statement.