To the Leadership of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC),

We respectfully urge the Asian Football Confederation to suspend Iran’s women’s national football team from all AFC competitions, including the upcoming AFC Women’s Asian Cup hosted in Australia, in light of the Iranian state’s involvement in one of the gravest human rights atrocities of the modern era.

In January 2026, Iranian security forces carried out a coordinated, nationwide crackdown on civilian protests. According to multiple independent human rights organisations, diaspora monitoring groups, medical networks, and eyewitness documentation, the repression resulted in the killing of at least 36,500 protesters and the injury of approximately 300,000 people, many of them women, students, and minors. Thousands more were arbitrarily detained, subjected to torture, or disappeared. Live ammunition, mass executions, and systematic targeting of protest hubs were widely reported.

These events were not isolated incidents. They form part of a sustained pattern of state violence that international observers and legal experts have identified as crimes against humanity, with serious concerns raised regarding genocidal intent against specific segments of the population. Investigations are ongoing within United Nations mechanisms and by international legal bodies.

Iranian women are central victims of this repression. They face institutionalised discrimination, enforced dress laws, restrictions on movement and speech, and violent punishment for peaceful dissent. Against this backdrop, allowing a women’s national team to compete under state authority—particularly on Australian soil—creates a stark ethical contradiction. Hosting such participation risks normalising or legitimising a regime that is actively responsible for mass civilian killing.

Australia, as host of the Women’s Asian Cup, has a strong public commitment to human rights, gender equality, and the rule of law. The AFC likewise aligns itself with FIFA’s Human Rights Policy and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. These commitments require action when a member association’s government is implicated in large-scale, systematic abuses.

This petition does not seek to punish individual athletes, many of whom may themselves be victims of coercion. Rather, it calls for institutional accountability. A temporary suspension is a proportionate and principled response that upholds the integrity of women’s sport and the values it represents.

We call on the AFC to:

• Suspend Iran’s women’s national football team from the Women’s Asian Cup and all AFC competitions pending verified human rights improvements.
• Publicly affirm that mass atrocities are incompatible with participation in international sport.