The record of artists and sports figures defecting from repressive regimes is long and impressive.
Famed ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, who headlined at the prestigious Kirov Ballet in Leningrad, defected from the Soviet Union to Canada in 1974.
The story spawned perhaps one of the most eloquent anti-communist films of all time, 1985’s “White Nights” co-staring Helen Mirren.
Cuban baseball players defect on a regular basis leaving the prison island for the big bucks of U.S. Major League Baseball. Luis Robert in 2017, Adolis Garcia in 2016, and Yordan Alvarez also in 2016 are on that list.
An Iranian martial arts Olympian joined that noble trek to freedom on Saturday, as 21 year old Kimia Alizadeh defected to the Netherlands. The report is from Agence-France Presse. The young athlete won a bronze medal in Taekwondo at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janiero.
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She explained her move on Instagram. A translation is available in the original post.
A U.S. State Department official had this to say about the development on Twitter.
#KimiaAlizadeh, Iran’s only female Olympic medalist, has rejected the regime’s oppression of women. She has defected for a life of security, happiness, and freedom. #Iran will continue to lose more strong women unless it learns to empower and support them. https://t.co/NIzdo4PPwI
— Morgan Ortagus (@statedeptspox) January 12, 2020
Alizadeh blasted the Islamist maniacs in charge in present day Tehran for “lying”, “injustice”, saying “none of us matters to them.” Her charge of “hypocrisy” is so accurate and timely it does not warrant further elucidation.
This has not been a good week for the down and dropping Near East thugocracy. First Friday January 3rd their top general and terrorist mastermind Qassem Soleimani is sent to his 72 virgins via the tender mercies of a justly-named U.S. Hellfire missile courteously delivered by an American Reaper drone.
Then last Wednesday their pathetic little effort, probably designed that way, to hit U.S. forces in Iraq with wayward missiles hardly has a discernible effect on the nighttime scene over the nation. Though if one believes the Dems and sociopaths, excuse the redundancy, who defend the Iranian regime it was the story of the century.
Then to add tragedy to farce the same day the Iranians shoot down a Ukrainian International Airlines passenger jet full of 176 innocent people bound for Kyiv. They cite “human error” for the savage mishap.
As internal pressure ratchets up on the mad mullahs of Tehran more will assuredly flee the isolated country. That pressure may very well happen with the covert U.S. help of sending communications equipment to Iranian dissidents . A similar American Intel operation in the Reagan era smuggled comms to the anti-communist Polish workers union Solidarity.
That U.S. assistance was a major contributing factor in Solidarity’s survival after the 1981 Soviet-ordered crackdown against it, the resurgent union’s 1989 victory in Polish legislative elections, and the subsequent return of a free and independent Poland.
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