MELBOURNE : Iranian women’s soccer players granted asylum in Australia face emotional upheaval and the pain of separation from family, an Afghan cricketer who fled the Taliban regime told Reuters on Wednesday.
Five members of the Iran women’s national football team were granted humanitarian visas by Australia on Tuesday after seeking asylum, fearing persecution if they returned to Iran following their refusal to sing the national anthem at a match in the AFC Women’s Asian Cup.
An additional player and a member of the support staff accepted Australian assistance, while another player decided to return home amid the U.S.-Israeli air campaign in Iran, the government said on Wednesday.
The situation has echoed the experience of Afghan cricketer Tooba Khan Sawari, who fled Afghanistan when the Taliban returned to power in 2021 and later found refuge in Australia along with other women athletes.
Sawari said the most difficult aspect of starting a new life was not learning a new language or adapting to a different culture but living far from loved ones.
“Being a refugee, it has lots of pain,” Sawari, now 25, told Reuters from Canberra, where she lives, studies and coaches cricket.
“Every day you will miss your parents, your family. You miss the time you spent with your compatriots. Even the food that you ate in your country — you miss each single thing.
“It’s not easy to manage everything by yourself without any family support,” she said. “It will mean lots of depression… I found it very difficult.”
Experts say maintaining links with sport can help refugee athletes cope with the confusion and anxiety of displacement.
“For the cricketers, that has been hugely important,” said Catherine Ordway, a visiting scholar at the UNSW Business School who helped Afghan women cricketers settle in Australia.
“That will be important for the Iranian players as well… They’ll be guided, I’m sure, by their legal advisers and community contacts that they’ve already made. And then they can start exploring what football team options there are,” she said.
Sawari said she underwent counselling for years after arriving in Australia to help cope with the psychological strain of exile.
While praising the Australian government for supporting her and her former Afghan teammates, she warned the Iranian footballers that adapting to a new country would take time.
“It’s not easy in a country when you don’t know about their language or culture,” she said. “It is very hard to accept that you’re living somewhere else.”
