“These women want freedom,” Act for America president Brigitte Gabriel, reacting to the bravery of the women’s soccer team, told AFN.
Representing their country at the Women’s Asian Cup, held in Australia, the entire women’s team remained silent when the Iranian national anthem played during their March 2 match against South Korea. That act of silence was seen as silent support for the U.S.-Israel military campaign, which had started just four days earlier, and killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the regime's brutal leader, in the attack’s first hours.
Iran’s surviving ayatollahs understood the symbolism, too, and threats likely reached the players that they and their families back home would pay a price for another act of defiance.
Back in Iran, the state-owned news media called them “wartime traitors” for refusing to sing the national anthem.
Almost a week later, on Sunday, the women’s team obediently sang before their match against Australia.
Before the team left Australia to return home, however, a total of six women had sought safety and been granted asylum by Australia’s government. That number dropped to five women (pictured at left) after a sixth teammate changed her mind.
To escape to freedom, the women had slipped away from their regime “minders” at the hotel by fleeing through a garage, according to news reports.
Footage posted to X shows the regime’s staff trying to catch the women in a hotel stairwell.
Leigh Swansborough, an Australian woman who filmed the footage, can be heard mocking and cursing the regime minders in the stairwell. She later said the police never helped the women nor tried to prevent the minders from catching them.
Outside the hotel, the remaining soccer players witnessed sympathetic protesters try to block their bus in an attempt to stop them from making the fateful trip back home.
Gabriel said she was surprised and pleased at Australia’s liberal government for granting asylum to the fleeing soccer players.
“I'm so proud to see Australia doing this because, as you know, Australia has gone so far backward in basically obeying Islamic laws,” she said.
During a layover in Malaysia, their last stop before going home, the female players witnessed strangers assure them the world supports them.
"We are spread across all hotels in Malaysia," the soccer players are told. "Don't be afraid. Nobody can harm you."
The regime's minders were also confronted for following orders that could lead to executions.
"What did you tell them to scare them so much?" one person asks. "Are you taking revenge?"
