Shohreh Bayat wearing a “Women Life Freedom” T-shirt at the Fischer Random World Championship. Photo: Twitter.

A Iranian chess referee — known as an arbiter — who was sanctioned by the world’s leading chess authority for publicly showing support for Ukraine and women in Iran at a recent tournament told The Algemeiner on Thursday that she has no regrets.

At a October 2022 tournament in Reykjavik, Iceland, Bayat wore a T-shirt with the message “Women Life Freedom,” which has become a motto used by anti-government protesters in Iran following the September death of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman who died while in the custody of Iran’s morality police. Bayat was then asked by FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich to stop wearing the shirt. She complied, but only to change into an outfit that was blue and yellow — the same colors as the Ukrainian flag.

“I would like to remind [Dvorkovich] that history will judge him,” Bayat told The Algemeiner. “We Iranian people are fighting for our basic rights. I was forced to be a refugee because of the harassment, which I received over my loose hijab in a world championship playing hall, [and] it makes me qualified to stand for my rights as well as the right of other Iranians. The FIDE must always encourage human rights and stop serving dictators.”

Following the incident Bayat said FIDE removed her from its Arbiters Commission and was instead offered a position on the FIDE’s Women’s Commission, but joining it would be uncomfortable for Bayat since its new secretary is Shadi Paridar, the vice president of the Iranian Chess Federation.

FIDE’s Chief Marketing and Communications Officer David Llada stated on Twitter that he was the first to raise the issue with Bayat about her T-shirt at the competition in Iceland during their “personal conversation,” but “since she did it again the next day, our president, who had personally appointed her for this role, had a conversation with her.” Llada said Bayat “doing activism” in her role as arbiter is “inappropriate and unprofessional.”

He added: “While we respect Ms. Bayat’s political stance and activities, any FIDE officials need to follow political neutrality while on duty, and of all the official positions one can hold, that of an arbiter is the one that demands higher standards of integrity, neutrality, and discretion…We are not judging her views or her activism, but the platform and moment she chose for it. An arbiter can not do that.”

Bayat disputed Llada’s narrative, denying that other arbiters had any issues with her clothes.

“It is not true and my colleagues were so nice to me, this includes the Icelandic organizer,” she told The Algemeiner. “My colleagues even asked to take photos with me when I had those clothes on and published it on their social media.”

Bayat further said that she doesn’t understand Llada’s claim that Dvorkovich “personally” invited her to be an arbiter at the competition. She said, “I was not aware of that it is a personal invitation and only saw it in FIDE statement. I expect all my appointments be based on rules rather than personal.”

Bayat left Iran in early 2020 after she faced harassment from the Iranian government for showing too much hair outside of her hijab, which is mandatory for women in Iran, at a women’s chess tournament in China. Her response to the backlash was to remove her hijab completely for the rest of the event and not return to her family in Iran, a decision that earned her the US Women of Courage award. She now residents in London and said her family in Iran at first received “loads of threats and face[d] massive problems” following her actions at the chess championship in Iceland, she told The Algemeiner.

FIDE’s president Dvorkovich is an ex-Kremlin official who served as a deputy prime minister of Russia from 2012 to 2018 after being the economic adviser to then-President Dmitry Medvedev. He sits on the honorary board of the Russian Chess Federation alongside President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov and Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu, and in February 2022, Dvorkovich awarded prizes to Russia’s armed forces, according to Chess24.

The publication also noted that he stepped down as head of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology before it was sanctioned by the US in 2022 for supporting weapon systems that are used by Russia’s military and that Dvorkovich disregarded recommendations by the International Olympic Committee to have the FIDE ban individual Russian players from competitions.

Bayat told The Algemeiner that she believes Dvorkovich’s political past and Iran’s allyship with Russia, especially during the current war with Ukraine, is a large reason why her attire bothered the FIDE president so much.

“Iran is sending drones to Russia and dictators are united together,” she said. “In my opinion, he [Dvorkovich] did not like my human right message because it is against his political interests.”