{"id":530860,"date":"2026-03-10T10:49:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T10:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/530860\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T10:49:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T10:49:13","slug":"iran-womens-soccer-team-not-the-first-middle-east-football-group-to-seek-asylum-in-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/530860\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran women\u2019s soccer team not the first Middle East football group to seek asylum in Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tony<\/p>\n

March 10, 2026 \u2014 4:45pm<\/p>\n

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Footballers from the Middle East, finding themselves in peril, first sought and gained asylum in Australia more than 85 years before members of the Iranian women\u2019s soccer team<\/a> did the same thing this week.<\/p>\n

In 1939, almost on the eve of World War II, a soccer team from the British Mandate of Palestine toured Australia.<\/p>\n

\"AustraliaAustralia and Palestine players shake hands before a soccer match in Sydney, on July 31, 1939. Newcastle Morning Herald<\/p>\n

Though the tour was billed as Palestine versus Australia, all the players were Jewish, from the Maccabi Tel Aviv team: Israel did not exist for another nine years.<\/p>\n

World War II was only two months away, and extreme repression and violence against Jews was at its height in Nazi Germany. Jews throughout Europe and the Middle East feared what would come next.<\/p>\n

And so, when the tour of Australia wound up in July 1939, six members of the team from Mandatory Palestine sought to stay in Australia, according to historians Roy Hay and Bill Murray, quoted in 100 years of the Socceroos: A team indivisible from Australian society, published in 2022 by Professional Footballers Australia.<\/p>\n

They were granted their wish.<\/p>\n

\"MinisterMinister for Home Affairs Tony Burke with five Iranian women soccer players who were granted asylum in Australia on Monday night.AP<\/p>\n

Three of them joined the Australian Army. Two \u2013 Abraham Beth-Halevy and Menachem Mirmevitch \u2013 died fighting the Japanese.<\/p>\n

War, as the Iranian women have had impressed upon them, brings desperately fraught times far from home for all manner of performers.<\/p>\n

Shortly after the team from Mandatory Palestine chose to stay in Australia, 14 members of the Vienna Mozart Boys Choir found themselves stranded in Melbourne when war broke out and their ship was requisitioned.<\/p>\n

The Austrian boys, thus, were officially \u201cenemy aliens\u201d. But Catholic Archbishop Daniel Mannix arranged for local families to take them in and paid for their education. The young choristers continued performing throughout the war.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Vienna Mozart Boys Choir with Archbishop Mannix in 1939. Melbourne Diocesan Historical Commission.<\/p>\n

Numerous men and women from strife-torn nations have since won asylum in Australia while on major sporting tours.<\/p>\n

The most spectacular mass defection was during the Cold War by almost half the Hungarian team at the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne.<\/p>\n

As the 111 Hungarian athletes arrived in Australia, they learned that Soviet troops had invaded their capital, Budapest, starting a bloody crackdown.<\/p>\n

Many of them decided they would not return home.<\/p>\n

\"MembersMembers of the Hungarian water polo team were among those who defected during the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. A polo game between Hungary and the USSR during the games became infamously known as the \u2018blood in the water\u2019 match. Olympic Photo Association<\/p>\n

When the Games were done \u2013 and the sporting world had been rocked by the infamous \u201cblood in the water\u201d match \u2013 48 members of the national team refused to return home.<\/p>\n

Some remained in Australia, and others eventually moved to the US. Footballers who stayed helped establish the Melbourne Hungaria Soccer Club, which played in the Victorian Soccer League for 30 years.<\/p>\n

Athletes from troubled African nations make up the majority of those who have sought asylum in Australia during big sporting events.<\/p>\n

Almost 30 sports people and officials from Cameroon, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Bangladesh applied for asylum after the Melbourne Commonwealth Games in 2006.<\/p>\n

\"LaminLamin Tucker (pictured in 2016) was captain of the Sierra Leone athletics team at the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games. He sought asylum and now lives in Sydney. Kate Geraghty<\/p>\n

In 2008, at least 15 participants from the 400 taking part from 52 nations in football\u2019s Homeless World Cup in Melbourne embraced the name of the competition literally. Hailing from Rwanda, Zimbabwe and Afghanistan, they filed for asylum.<\/p>\n

Asylum-seeking among sport participants reached a crescendo in 2018 when the Commonwealth Games were held on the Gold Coast and the Invictus Games occurred in Sydney. It was also a high-watermark for refusals of protective visas.<\/p>\n

More than 200 people decided not to go home to Rwanda, Cameroon, Uganda, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan. The following year, 2019, documents revealed the Department of Home Affairs had rejected 217 of about 230 applications for protective visas.<\/p>\n

The Afghan women\u2019s football team, in the end, had greater fortune.<\/p>\n

\"AfghanAfghan soccer players Fatima and Adiba Ganji fled the Taliban.Penny Stephens<\/p>\n

Formed by the Afghanistan Olympic Committee in 2007, the team members found themselves on the dangerous side of history when the Taliban came to power and consigned women to the status of the invisible.<\/p>\n

The women buried their uniforms and trophies, fearing for their lives.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But after a campaign by leading Australian soccer and human rights figures, the Australian government in 2021 provided emergency visas for about 50 female athletes, officials and their families and evacuated them from Kabul airport.<\/p>\n

The Afghan women\u2019s football team was sponsored by A-League Club Melbourne Victory and Victoria University.<\/p>\n

Now, with the Middle East in chaos again, Iran under attack and threats of retribution made to the Iranian women\u2019s football team for refusing to sing their national anthem in Australia, an old story is being replayed.<\/p>\n

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"TonyTony Wright<\/a> is an associate editor and special writer for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 10, 2026 \u2014 4:45pm Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-530860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}