Iranian climber goes without hijab, then leaves competition

Elnaz Rekabi, 33, a top competitive climber, suddenly left a competition in Seoul, South Korea, on Tuesday. She had competed on Sunday without the headscarf her country mandates for women. Farsi-language media outside of Iran, such as the BBC’s Persian service, reported that she may have been forced to leave early by Iranian officials and that she could face arrest back home. Tehran quickly denied those allegations. In a tweet, the Iranian Embassy in Seoul denied “all the fake, false news and disinformation” about Rekabi’s departure.

Why is this a big deal? Rekabi’s lack of a headscarf comes during ongoing countrywide protests sparked five weeks ago by the death of an Iranian-Kurdish woman while in police custody. The country's morality police had detained 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for wearing her hijab incorrectly. An Instagram post on an account attributed to Rekabi apologized, saying that her lack of hijab was unintentional. It’s unclear if Rekabi wrote the post herself.

Dig deeper: Read Erica Kwong’s report from the WORLD archives about how China disappeared a prominent women’s tennis player after her #MeToo allegations and prompted boycotts of the Beijing Olympics.