Updated ,first published
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has invited more Iranian women’s soccer players to seek asylum in Australia as advocates urge authorities to speedily detain any regime handlers who have been trying to intimidate the women into returning home.
Five Iranian players made an audacious escape from the rest of the team at their Gold Coast hotel on Monday night and have been granted humanitarian visas to remain in Australia.
Iranian-Australian advocates hope more players will follow their teammates before the rest of the team departs Australia as early as Tuesday.
Albanese celebrated the players’ escape, saying they should feel at home in Australia.
“We’re willing to provide assistance to other women in the team, noting that this is a very delicate situation and it is up to them,” he said.
“But we say to them: if you want our help, help is here and we will provide that.”
Speculation swirled on Tuesday morning that more players had separated from the team, known as the Lionesses, but this was forcefully denied by the Department of Home Affairs.
It is unclear when the rest of the team will fly out of Australia.
Albanese said he had spoken to Donald Trump at 2am after the US President took to social media to angrily complain that Australia had not done enough to protect the women.
Trump’s call for Australia to offer asylum to the women came after five members of the team had already escaped and this masthead and others had reported they were being protected by police.
“We had a very positive discussion,” Albanese said of his early morning call with Trump.
“He was concerned about the Iranian women in the soccer team and their welfare and their safety if they returned home. He conveyed that to me. I was able to convey to him the action that we’d undertaken over the previous 48 hours and that five of the team had asked for assistance and had received it and were safely located.”
Albanese continued: “Assistance remains available for the other members of the team, but it, of course, is a decision for them. If they make a decision to ask for support, they will receive it.”
Human rights advocate Sara Rafiee urged police to take in any handlers for questioning and for their visas to be revoked given the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been designating a terror organisation.
This would allow the female players more agency to decide whether they wanted to return to stay in Australia or return to Australia, she said in a call supported by other Iranian-Australian community leaders.
“We are grateful to the Australian government for acting swiftly in granting visas to the five Lionesses,” she said.
“At the same time we support calls for the government to immediately revoke the visas of any accompanying Islamic Republic officials or security personnel involved in threatening or intimidating these players, and to place them in immigration detention while their conduct and any potential links to the IRGC are investigated on national security grounds and for issuing threats and intimidation.”
Rafiee said the situation was similar to a domestic violence cases in which victims are separated from their partner so they are not subjected to coercive control.
“The safety of these women must come first,” she said.
Liberal frontbencher Julian Leeser said: “The government should immediately revoke the visas of any accompanying security personnel involved in threats or intimidation against these brave women, and put them in immigration detention now.”
Branding the regime in Tehran “terrorists and murderers”, Leeser said: “They have killed 30,000 of their own citizens over the last month. We must take the fears of retribution seriously.”
Leeser said every member of the team should have the opportunity to speak individually with an Australian Border Force agent or other government official, and to seek asylum if they want it.
“Subject to all the normal security checks, we should offer the women of the Iranian team an alternative to returning to Iran,” he said.
The players who escaped have been identified as captain Zahra Ghanbari and her teammates Fatemeh Pasandideh, Zahra Sarbali, Atefeh Ramazanzadeh and Mona Hamoudi.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the women were happy to be identified, emphasising they regarded themselves as athletes not political activists.
Burke, who raced to Brisbane to assist the escape effort, told reporters: “There has been a lot of work that’s been going on in recent days to make sure that we had the maximum number of opportunities for these women to know that they could seek assistance if they wanted to, and to have the maximum number of opportunities to directly seek that assistance.”
He continued: “I say to the other members of the team, the same opportunity is there.
“Australia has taken the Iranian women’s soccer team into our hearts. These women are tremendously popular in Australia, but we realise they are in a terribly difficult situation with the decisions that they’re making.
“But the opportunity will continue to be there for them to talk to Australian officials if they wish to.“
More to come…
