Shahindokht Molaverdi denounces men whose violent threats prevented women getting into Iran match against the US as sanctimonious

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

One of Iran’s vice-presidents has condemned conservative hardliners who are blocking her attempt to let women watch volleyball matches.

Shahindokht Molaverdi, whose brief covers women and family affairs, denounced men whose violent threats prevented women getting into a match on Friday as sanctimonious.

Two hundred tickets for Iran’s keenly anticipated clash with the US at the Azadi sport complex in Tehran were reserved for women, but security officials at the stadium refused to allow them in to see the game.

Women have been banned from attending sporting events since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, but Hassan Rouhani’s moderate government has been trying to relax the restrictions.

An Iranian volleyball official said the 200 women’s tickets had not been approved by security officials and so were not valid. Hardliners have recently stepped up their campaign against women watching live sport, handing out posters in central Tehran branding female volleyball fans as prostitutes and sluts.

Writing on Facebook, Molaverdi said that her conservative opponents were “from those who were denounced two years ago by voters, and who had crawled into their cave of oblivion””.

She criticised the “crowd of sanctimonious people who published one notice after another denouncing the modest and decent girls and women of this land” and who “used obscene and disgusting insults that only befit themselves”.

The issue of gender at sporting events attracted international attention after the arrest last summer of a British-Iranian law graduate, Ghoncheh Ghavami, who took part in a protest outside a stadium in the capital before a male volleyball match.

Jailed for five months before being released on bail, she was later sentenced to a year in prison for propaganda against the government and having contacts with opposition groups.