#refugee athletes

[allwomenjointhe4bmovement]

[higherentity]

[tutuandscoot]

Ten thousand TRILLION percent yes T. Be a real human Social Media is not even ‘real’ nor is it everyone’s outlet, the be all and end all for where feelings and opinions live and die be your own human have your values live true to them fuck everyone with two thumbs and a social media account who can’t mind their own business. She’s a wonderful person with a ginormous heart and strong values she does not ever have to justify or be a spokesperson for every single cause on this planet. Being real and actioning real change and conversations off line is is important do people really think saying the same sentence as everyone else on social media is actually going to single handedly change anything NO it takes actual physical action and using your brain not your thumbs on Twitter. These platforms are built precisely for hiding your true self and being fake there is next to no sincerity in simply typing the same words everyone else is just to seem empathetic.. it’s not.

45:00 onwards

[vicholas]

I want more people to know that while the Palestine Olympic team consists of only 8 athletes, at least 69 Palestinian Olympic athletes have been killed since October 2023. This includes athletes who were going to compete in these games and retired athletes such as Majed Abu Maraheel, the first Palestinian Olympian, who died of kidney failure in a refugee camp product of lack of medical treatment.

Remember them during these games.

[good-old-gossip]

The first Palestinian athlete to participate in the Olympic games died on Wednesday at the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza as a result of kidney failure due to power outages and medical shortages as a result of the ongoing Israeli war and siege of the enclave.

Majed Abu Maraheel, who passed away at the age of 61, became the first athlete to be the flag bearer and represent Palestinians at the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996. Being a distance runner, he competed in the 10km race.

Since his breakthrough on the world stage, more than 20 Palestinian men and women have been able to compete at Olympic competitions.

"He was a Palestinian icon, and he will remain as such," his brother told Paltoday TV after the funeral.

"We tried to evacuate him to Egypt but then the Rafah crossing was closed (by Israel), and his condition kept deteriorating."

In his preparation for the Olympics, Abu Maraheel would often be seen on his daily runs from his home in Gaza to the Erez Crossing with Israel, which Israel closed in October after imposing a full blockade on the Strip.

Last month, it was reopened for the first time since then.

He would often have to pass through that crossing for his job as a day labourer in Israel. After participating in the Olympics, Abu Maraheel went on to become a coach for other Palestinian runners hoping to replicate his presence at the international competition.

Abu Maraheel's death highlights the grim fate of many Palestinians who are facing kidney failure in Gaza.

A report from the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor in March found that there were between 1,000 to 1,500 patients in Gaza with kidney failure, and that they are facing a "slow death" because of "a lack of medical and therapeutic services, medications and other necessities".

Israel denies blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza, though aid agencies say they are not able to get aid in because of Israeli restrictions.

[gaia-prime]

PARIS, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Afghan female athlete Manizha Talash, a member of the refugee Olympic team at the Paris Games, displayed the words "Free Afghan Women" on her cape during her breaking routine in the competition's pre-qualifiers on Friday.

Political slogans and statements are banned on the field of play and on podiums at the Olympics, meaning Talash could face a potential sanction.

source

[sayruq]

On Monday, April 15, the Palestinian Football Association announced that three children from the Al-Wahda Sports Academy had been killed during Israeli raids in Deir al-Balah, located in the heart of the Gaza Strip. “We announce the martyrdom of players Sami Bilal Abu Issa and Muhammad Bilal Abu Issa,” Al Wahda Academy announced on its Facebook account, which followed up by announcing the death of Adam Ramez Nabhan in another Israeli bombing. “Our hearts break for their loss.” The three children—the youngest of whom was was four years old, with the other two aged six—are among the hundreds of Palestinian athletes who have been killed since the war broke out between Israel and Hamas on October 7, 2023. Later that same day, the PFA revealed that at least 182 athletes and sports officials had been killed amid Israel’s destruction of Gaza, including no less than 28 children. An overwhelming number of the athletes killed were members of Gaza’s once vibrant football ecosystem. Among the notable names is Hani Al-Masdar, a former player and manager of the Olympic team, and Mohammed Barakat, Gaza’s first centurion of goals and a former national team player known as the “Legend of Khan Younis.” Israel has also destroyed or partially dozens of football facilities in Palestine since the start of the war. These include all of Gaza’s professional football stadiums, as well as the PFA headquarters, which was also targeted by Israeli airstrikes. Meanwhile, smaller facilities and dirt pitches have been transformed into makeshift refugee camps, field hospitals, and mass graves.

You can find the entire list of athletes murdered or injured by Israel in link above

[autisticbokutoenthusiast]

giving a shoutout to Manizha Talash

she was the breaking athlete for team refugee, but originally is from afghanistan.

in this interview she says:

"I'll compete for my friends and for their dreams and hopes" "The girls of Afghanistan will never surrender. Whatever pressure you put on an Afghan girl - restrict her, or even imprison her - she'll definitely find a way out and will definitely achieve her goals. We fight and we will win."

wishing you luck in the future Talash!

[bobcatmoran]

I kind of love the implication that Leon Marchand just walked all the way to the stadium with the little lantern with the Olympic Flame.

Oh. And having the representative athletes from the five continents (Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas which get lumped together for Reasons) + the refugee team blow out the flame to end the games was so good, symbolically.

[higherentity]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusra_Mardini

[the-cimmerians]

Queer and trans folk around the world often take an interest in the athletes from our community, and Outsports even collects a database of all the the out LGBTQ competitors. While JK Rowling and 99 percent of conservative media were harassing two cis women boxers, 195 QT athletes represented 26 nations and none, but we’ll get to that. That makes this the queerest Olympics ever, beating out the total of 186 out athletes in Tokyo and, if Queer Nation granted citizenships, would be the 14th largest national contingent at the games. That hypothetical Queer Nation would also have placed sixth in the medal count, tying the Netherlands with 15 golds but falling neatly between the Dutch and host country France on the strength of silvers and bronzes.

One happy bit of news is that in both golds and overall medal count, Queer Nation beat out every single country in the world that criminalizes same-sex boinking. The only bad news seems to be that people competing in the men’s events seem a little underqueered compared to the women. Can’t we at least get a few interested in the Greco-Roman wrestling? Yr Wonkette is just asking.

...

Sure, justice in silver and gold for badass bisexual Black woman Sha’Carri Richardson, excluded from Tokyo on the basis of smoking legal weed in Eugene, Oregon, was as sweet as sativa; it was fun to see Diana Taurasi go out on the queer top with her sixth Olympic gold in a row (team USA’s eighth consecutive women’s basketball gold); and seeing the shoulders on those women rugby players was a dream come true. But we want to speak about someone who didn’t represent any country at all: Cindy Ngamba.

Ngamba is a middleweight (75kg) boxer originally from Cameroon. At 11 years old some family members fled to the United Kingdom as refugees, and brought Ngamba along. The family maintains it had the proper approval for Cindy, but that when her uncle returned to Cameroon it was lost. The UK Home Office has been threatening to deport her since the age of 16, when she was accepted to university and realized she couldn’t produce her visa for her college paperwork.

Despite the threats, Ngamba fought and won many times in the UK’s amateur boxing competitions, having started as a hobbyist in the local Bolton Lads and Girls Club program. She also went on to get an undergraduate degree with honors, all while threats of deportation hung over her head. After winning a UK national championship, she met then-PM Theresa May celebrating her win and the efforts of the Lads & Girls Club where she trained. One might think that the UK might eventually forgive an 11-year-old girl for not keeping track of her paperwork herself, but the Home Office has remained resolute denying Ngamba regularized status.

What makes all this both horrifyingly inhumane and also relevant to this article is that Ngamba is an out lesbian. She has been consistently denied a path to citizenship or even legal residency, only escaping deportation because of her ability to document horror after horror inflicted on queer residents of Cameroon. International law prohibits sending a refugee back to their nation of citizenship or previous residence if they would face persecution and risk of great harm, a crime called “refoulement.”

“If I was sent back, I can be in danger,” Ngamba said. “So, I was given the refugee status to be safe and protected."

Unable to represent the UK and unable to compete in qualifying competitions in Cameroon, Ngamba got an opportunity that no other stateless athlete had ever shared before 2016: she was named to the IOC Refugee Olympic Team. So far that team has only been allowed to compete in the summer games, and only in Rio, Tokyo, and this year in Paris. (They will be allowed to compete in the Winter Games for the first time in 2026.) Given the incredible barriers most refugees face, it is perhaps not surprising that no Refugee Team member has ever won a medal. But while Ngamba has faced incredible legal problems and a ruthlessly anti-immigrant government her entire time in the UK, she at least had better training facilities in her local Lads & Girls than most refugees can dream.

And the dreams paid off. Team Refugee got its first medal ever when Ngamba took home middleweight bronze. "I just want to tell every refugee out there, whether they are an athlete or not, to never give up,” she said after being asked to carry the Olympic flag at the opening of the games. When she won, the whole refugee team took to the internet to celebrate:

“The Refugee Olympic Team is incredibly proud of Cindy Ngamba, the first EOR athlete and the first-ever refugee medallist at the Olympics,” the team posted on X, formerly Twitter. “Today, we are speechless. Cindy did it. Refugees did it!”

Yes, yes you did.

[girlactionfigure]

הצביעות האולימפית שוברת שיאים! למשלחת הישראלית לא אישרו אפילו סיכת חטופים כי זה מסר פוליטי מבחינתם, הם גם פסלו ספורטאית פליטה מאפגניסטן כי הניפה מסר למען חופש לנשים האפגניות שתחת דיכוי אבל הם אישור למשלחת הספורטאים הפלסטינים ללבוש בטקס הפתיחה חולצות עם ציור של מטוסים משגרים טילים כמחאה על הלחימה בעזה. פשוט לא ייאמן... מה שבטוח אנחנו נזכור מהאולימפיאדה הזו את ההישג המטורף של נבחרת ישראל, ולגבי הצביעות הבלתי נתפסת של הוועד האולימפי- מגיע להם לקבל מדליית הזהב בצביעות... 

It’s shameful that the Olympics disqualified refugee athlete Manizha Talash, from Afghanistan, for wearing a cape reading “Free Afghan Women”, and the Olympic committee refuses to allow Israeli athletes to wear a hostage pin, but none of the Palestinian athletes were disqualified for wearing shirts with bombs on them at the Opening ceremony.