A woman born without part of her arm has escaped the repressive Taliban government in Afghanistan and has won the bronze medal in women’s taekwondo at the Paralympics. Zakia Khudadadi dedicated her medal to the women of Afghanistan and “all the refugees of the world.”
The Paralympics Games are held for athletes that have a disability, and they’re going on in Paris this year. Khudadadi was born without a portion of her forearm, and she competed in the taekwondo match on August 29, describing her win as a “surreal moment.”
Khudadadi, 25, said she went through a long struggle to get the games, and she hopes the country she escaped from will one day come to peace.
The Taliban is an ultra-extreme Islamist political group that took governmental control of Afghanistan after the disastrous U.S. withdrawal of troops from that country in 2021. The Biden Administration president over a bungled operation that left 13 servicemembers dead, and left the women of Afghanistan to be ruled by warlords who treat women as literal chattel property with no rights.
The Taliban “virtue” police have been even more emboldened recently by new regulations that require women to be fully covered from head to toe, including the face, and prohibit women from reading or speaking or singing in public.
Khudadadi’s journey out of slavery and toward the 2024 Paralympics actually began with the Paralympics in Tokyo in 2021. She was competing for Afghanistan that year, the same year that the U.S. pulled out of the region. In fear for what her life would be like as a woman, Khudadadi made a video pleading with people around the world to help her escape the country.
The world noticed, and helped. Though no one knows their identities, several people got the taekwondo master onto a plane in Afghanistan, sending her to Tokyo to compete in that year’s games. After competing, she moved to France and started training for her 2024 competition.
She said she plans to compete in the 2028 games, and she said she wanted to give her bronze medal to “the whole world” in recognition of the plight of women in Afghanistan, and in thanks to the people who cared enough to rescue her.
