By: Omid Habibinia
Iran’s Football team which had only two matches, said farewell to WM2006; but thousands of Iranians who watched these matches in Germany showed
different behaviors toward Iran football with different flags. Some of them carried flags with the sun and lion (shir o khorshid) which belonged to the pervious regime and used today by Monarchists and Mojahedin-e- Khalagh. Some of them cheered the team without a emblem or with an ”IRAN” instead of the sign of Allah of the Islamic Republic or that of Monarchist and finally a few of them mostly came from Iran carried Islamic Republic`s Flag with the sign of Allah(god) in the middle of it.
Last year I was invited to an international forum in another country. In the opening ceremony together with journalists or bloggers from around the world with their national flags; so I refused to carry that of the Islamic Republic on the scene. But the director asked whether or not I wanted to carry another country’s flag.
The same story happened again in Germany. Many Iranians used other flags and of course, Islamic Republics’ TV does not like it. They censored all the scenes from Iranians with non-Islamic flags in the stadium and girls. These two forbidden subjects never will be shown in IRIB, who pretends to broadcast these matches Live from Germany but actually have a 1 or 2 minute delay to censure unwanted scenes.
Now Iranians in Frankfurt with their different flags desperately cheers and at the same time critic Iran’s team because the others just laugh at them and it has no difference for them. But, the war of flags continues!
Published in WikiNews
