Disqualified Afghan refugee deserves praise

If Manizha Talash was at home, the Taliban would probably stone her.

- ROSIE DIMANNO

Revealing the slogan "FREE AFGHAN WOMEN" on her cape was not a political action by Manizha Talash, but a plea for the women that the Taliban has all but erased from existence, writes Rosie DiManno.

So what’s a little DQ from the Olympics?

The young woman, so gloriously free of the brutal and barbarous regime that has resumed power in Afghanistan, made her point as a refugee, as an escapee, as a person of individual will and human rights.

In the sport of breaking, of all things. Which would get her broken into a thousand pieces at home, certainly lashed by a morality police squad.

Afghanistan, land of muzzled girls and burqa’d women, would punish the athlete known as “b-girl Talash” for the audacity of doing sports, much less the insolence of breakdancing, even though her performance kit covered pretty much the entirety of her body. Not the face, however, which the Taliban prefers sheathed and always with head covered.

On Friday, b-girl Talash was disqualified from the first ever Olympic breaking competition for the purportedly provocative and verboten act of making a political statement whilst on the playing field of the Games. Which, in the view of the pinhead World DanceSport Federation — the sport’s governing body — violated Rule 50 of the Olympic charter forbidding political protests or messaging. Disqualified for “displaying a political slogan on her attire during the Pre-Qualifier battle.”

What a shirty, shoddy thing to do.