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The executive director of USA Wrestling said Monday that the American team still plans to compete next month in Iran, one of seven Muslim-majority countries whose citizens were temporarily banned from the U.S. by an executive order from President Donald Trump.

USA Wrestlings Rich Bender told The Associated Press that the Americans have every intention of travelling to Kermanshah for the mens freestyle World Cup on Feb. 16-17. Bender said the U.S. federation been given assurances from the Iranians that special attention is being given to their applications.

The scheduled trip to Iran will be the first major test for U.S. athletes travelling to one of the seven nations affected by Trumps 90-day ban, issued last week.

Were going to respect the laws and orders of those in leadership positions in government and figure out how to embrace those and work with them to secure proper documentation for athletes to come here and us to go there, Bender said.

Irans senior vice-president Ishaq Jahangiri, through the official IRNA news agency, said Monday that Trumps executive order was illegal, inhumane and against human rights.

The U.S. and Iran two of the worlds top wrestling countries have long found common ground on the mat. The U.S. wrestling team was the first American sports team to compete in Iran in nearly 20 years back in 1998, and the Iranian team has competed in the U.S. 16 times since the 1990s.

Wrestling has shown a long, rich history of transcending politics and participating despite governmental disagreements, Bender said. Thats the beauty of sport and the Olympic movement. Its about competition, not politics.

USA Wrestling plans to send 13 wrestlers, two coaches, a referee, a medical staff member, a videographer and other official delegates to Kermanshah, which is in western Iran some 310 miles southwest of Tehran.

The annual World Cups in each discipline are among the most prestigious tournaments in the world. Iran will also host the Greco-Roman World Cup in Tehran in March.

Continued here:
US wrestlers plan to travel to Iran despite Trump's ban - The Globe and Mail

Vienna was always the transit point for people facing religious persecution in Iran who wanted to reach the U.S. Now, hundreds have been told to go back to their tormentors.

BERLIN, GermanyMaybe, just maybe, President Donald Trump will feel something akin to sadness to know that his new border rules prompted Austria to cancel three hundred transit visas, which had been intended for Iranian Christians, Jews and Bahai trying to flee religious persecution at home.

For decades, Austria has been acting as the go-between for refugees from Iran who have a prospects of admittance to the United States (which doesnt have an embassy in Tehran). The program began originally as an endeavor by the late U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg to help Jews and Evangelical Christians out of the Soviet Union, but developed into a national program focused on Iran, which also makes other religious minorities in Iran eligible for refugee status, most notably the much-persecuted Baha'is.

This week, around 300 hopeful applicants were getting ready to travel from Iran to Austria with documents that would allow them to stay there for about six months. The stay itself hardly rates raves, given there is little to do but trudge through the asylum application process with help from a local NGO, go to the U.S. embassy for interviews, and bite ones nails while waiting for official approval from the United States come summertime. It was a nerve-wrecking experiencebut worth it.

No longer, though. U.S. authorities told us that the onward trip for people to the USA, who received visas from Austrian authorities as part of the program, would be put on hold for now, Thomas Schnll, the Austrian Foreign Ministry spokesman, told the Associated Press. The message reportedly arrived several days before Trump signed the decree on Friday.

The Foreign Ministry in Vienna has been trying to contact the 300 applicants to inform them that they cant come to Austria after all. But so far, theyve only reached 100 people. We dont know many of the remaining 200 are already on the move from Iran to Austria. The Foreign Ministry in Vienna has been spending the weekend searching through its records for airline bookings in order to track down these remaining applicants and put a last-minute stop to their quest for refuge.

Three Iranians (one elderly couple and one young woman) were left stranded at the airport in Vienna on Saturday, despite having valid travel documents and tickets for flights to the U.S. The woman took a flight back to Iran, while the elderly couple spent the night in Vienna.

Meanwhile, Schnll has said it is legally impossible for Austria to accept the Iranian asylum seekers in the USAs stead. And the small countrys tough line doesnt just come as a response to Washingtons latest. Austria, strained by 2015s influx of refugees, has been introducing caps and stricter security measures ever since. It was never interested in being more than a short-term transit point for the Iranians, and it certainly isnt now.

And this was made coldly clear in a State Department email on Tuesday: Any previously approved applicant who now tries to enter Austria anyway will be blocked permanently.

As for the estimated 30 Iranian applicants who are already in Austria on a short-term visa, their fate is uncertain. In prior years, The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS, a processing centre in Vienna) told refugees who got rejected in Austria not to go back to Iranbecause the discrimination and harassment that forced them to leave in the first place was likely to get even worse upon their return.

So where else can they go? By way of Austria, Iranian Jews can travel to Israel, but that is not an option for other religious minorities. (And it is very difficult to immigrate to Israel from Iran directly).

We dont know yet how Trumps hasty orders will shake out once the courts are done with him, and how nations that have acted as points of transit for the United States so far will reshape their own border policies accordingly. Austrias government, like several other European countries, hasnt even made a statement condemning Trumps actions yet. (German Chancellor Angela Merkel, despite a polite phone call with Trump, finally had her spokesman come out Sunday and denounce Trumps unjustifiable general suspicion against people of a certain origin or a certain religion).

In the past, there have been several discussions about curbing the Iranian Lautenberg immigration program, which, according the HIAS, eases the burden of proof for members of historically persecuted groups. Critics have argued that many other refugees would benefit from a move to the United States more than religious minorities in Iran.

But for now, these discussions are finished, because US officials have simply suspended the program. If, when and on what terms it will begin again? No one knows.

If this is what happens to the refugees that Trump supposedly favors, one must wonder what on earth can we expect to happen to all the immigrants that he so obviously loathes?

Link:
Iranian Jews, Christians, and Bahai Stuck in Iran - Daily Beast

Marzieh Moosavizadeh and her grandson follow a routine when she visits almost every year from Iran.

The 75-year-old, who travels in a wheelchair and speaks little English, struggles to find direct flights to Phoenix, where he and his family live. So they meet in Los Angeles and he escorts her on the last leg of her trip.

This time was different.

Moosavizadeh landed at Los Angeles International Airport a day after President Trump signed an executive order banning citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries, including Iran, from entering the United States.

Moosavizadehs plans to catch her last flight were upended when she said shewas held at LAX for nine hours with dozens ofother passengers who, like her, had no idea whether they would be released or sent back to their native country.

Sitting there for eight hours, for somebody who has arthritis, is very, very hard,Moosavizadeh saidwhile recounting her detention in an interview with The Times in Persian while her son translated by phone. Please, tell Mr. Trump when they make these kind of decisions, think it all the way through.

For Moosavizadeh, who her grandson said hasheld a green card since 1997, the anxiety set in when she landed shortly after 4 p.m. on Saturday.

Customs officers scanned her passport, held it up next to her head and told her to wait. Then, they ushered her to a room where she said a couple dozen passengers Iranians, Africans and Asians were being held.

She sat there for two hours before officers led her, along with a handful of others passengers from her flight, to another room filled with travelers from Iran.Shespent the next several hours there.

At about 6 p.m., Moosavizadehs wheelchair attendant offered her a cellphone to call her grandson.

She told him to go eat and rest she heard shed be held for a few more hours. He told her to stay calm, he wasnt going anywhere.

Every hour or so, Moosavizadeh said, officers would come by to escort passengers to the bathroom or drop off 8-ounce water bottles. The English-speakers implored them for answers.

Its out of our hands, the officers said. Their fate was up to their superiors.

Passengers were afraid to talk to one another, Moosavizadeh said. No one knew whether theyd be released or sent back to Iran.

Most of them, they thought they were going to get deported, she said, through her son.

At one point, she was taken elsewhere for questioning. Customs officers asked her when she last visited the U.S., who she lives with in Iran and where she gets her income.

When she returned, she snacked on almonds shed packed in her purse.

Thank God I put them in my purse, otherwise I didnt have anything on me, she said.

Meanwhile, in Phoenix, her sons frantically refreshed news articles and peppered her grandson, Siavosh Naji-Talakar, with questions he couldnt answer. Huddled amongthrongs of boisterous protesters demanding the detainees be released,Naji-Talakar could do little but wait.

Over and over, they chanted, Let them in! They said theywouldnt leave otherwise.

Some offered Naji-Talakar food and a couch for the night, others money for a hotel room.

Nearby, the detainees heard the cries, faintly. They had no idea, though, if those who had gathered were there to support or decry them. A customs officer, Moosavizadeh said, told the group that it wasnt safe for them to let them go.

Eventually, officers began calling passengers one by one. Detainees were taken away, alone or in pairs, while those left behind wondered if they were being released or deported.

We all thought they were going to give us hard time first and then send us back, Moosavizadeh said.

She added that she wants Trump to know that Muslims condemn Islamic State.

They might be Muslim, but theyre not a part of us, she said. We are all brothers and sisters and we dont believe in their values at all.

Moosavizadehs name was among the last ones called, at about 1 a.m.

Finally, she said, she was released from prison.

When she spotted her grandson in the crowd, she felt like she was flying.

He saw her too,and bolted.

I pushed people out of the way, I was like, Get out of my way, Naji-Talakar said. I ran up to her and gave a big old hug.

Thats when the cheering and chanting started again.

Over and over, We got grandma!

alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com

Twitter: @alenetchek

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View post:
75-year-old grandmother from Iran tells the story of her detention at LAX - Los Angeles Times

A Long Island PhD student from Iran who was detained at JFK Airport for 24 hours after President Trumps executive order instituting extreme vetting of Muslims was finally released Sunday.

A visibly relieved Vahideh Rasekhi hugged friends as she was released. She had arrived at the airport Saturday from Iran, where she had been visiting family.

Its so embarrassing. I feel happy to be here, and it feels great, the Stony Brook University student said.

Rasekshi had twice been placed on flights headed back to Iran on Saturday but was then rescued at the last minute when a federal judge issued an emergency ruling that halted Trumps order. Another man who made it through security detailed his 12-hour ordeal.

The 31-year-old, who declined to give his name, was born in Iran but has lived in Austin, Texas, for the past nine years.

He had been there visiting family but jumped on a plane to return to the States once he learned of the executive order, saying he was in shock.

When his plane landed at JFK, he was pulled aside with four others but was given no reasoning.

[The agents] brought us in and werent friendly, he said. They were interviewing me telling me Id be out in 5 minutes and asked me the same questions.

The 31-year-old had been detained alongside a man visiting his daughter, one student with a visa and an elderly Sudanese woman in a wheelchair.

He said he was asked the same questions by three different officers: What is your name? What is your address? What you were doing in Iran? Why did you come back to the United States?

The man said he will return to Austin but wont ever travel outside the U.S. until hes ready to leave permanently.

Mr. President, he said in conclusion, good job for not making America great.

View post:
Iranian PhD student released after detainment at JFK - New York Post

Asghar Farhadi with his Oscar for A Separation, which won best foreign language film in 2012. Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

The 2017 Oscars ceremony has emerged as an unlikely battleground for the fight against Donald Trumps ban on refugees and travellers from predominantly Muslim countries as film-makers affected by the restrictions vowed not to attend.

An Oscar-nominated Iranian film-maker said he would not attend next months ceremony in Hollywood even if he were offered an exemption to Trumps ban, which includes visitors from Iran.

Asghar Farhadi, whose The Salesman is nominated for best foreign language film, said any possible exception to the travel ban would involve ifs and buts which are in no way acceptable to me.

Fridays decision by the US president to ban people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US has thrown into doubt whether the Iranian cast and crew can attend the awards show, which takes place in Los Angeles in February.

Under the order, Iranians who do not have a green card or dual US nationality are not allowed into the country. It is not clear whether there are exemptions for cases such as Farhadis.

The organiser of the Oscars said it was extremely troubling that film-makers could be barred from entering the US.

Farhadi originally planned to attend the ceremony if possible and draw the medias attention to the unjust circumstances which have arisen for the immigrants and travellers of several countries to the United States, he wrote to the New York Times. But the conditions that would be attached to any potential entry visa were unacceptable, he said.

He compared the framing of the travel ban to the rhetoric of hardliners in Iran. In order to understand the world, they have no choice but to regard it via an us and them mentality, which they use to create a fearful image of them and inflict fear in the people of their own countries, he wrote.

A spokeswoman for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said: As supporters of film-makers and the human rights of all people around the globe, we find it extremely troubling that Asghar Farhadi, the director of the Oscar-winning film from Iran A Separation, along with the cast and crew of this years Oscar-nominated film The Salesman, could be barred from entering the country because of their religion or country of origin.

The Academy added that it celebrated film-making which seeks to transcend borders and speak to audiences around the world, regardless of national, ethnic, or religious differences.

Even before the travel ban was announced, one of the films stars, Taraneh Alidoosti, an Iranian actor who lives in the US, called Trumps immigration policies racist and vowed to boycott the ceremony in protest.

She wrote on Twitter:

Trumps executive order, issued on Friday night, indefinitely blocked US entry to all those fleeing conflict in Syria and imposed a 90-day ban on people from Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. He said the move was to allow for extreme vetting and to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the US.

Stars from the film industry voiced anger at Trumps immigration policies. The film-maker Michael Moore tweeted:

The actor and director Rob Reiner tweeted: Along with liar, racist, misogynist, fool, infantile, sick, narcissist with the Muslim ban we can now add heartless and evil to [Donald Trumps] repertoire.

Farhadis film A Separation won the Oscar for best foreign language film in 2012.

This years Academy Awards take place on 26 February.

Press Association and the Associated Press contributed to this report

Read more from the original source:
Oscars hit by Trump travel ban row as Iranian film-makers protest - The Guardian