Meena Asadi, an Afghan athlete based in Indonesia, has won a Fervent Global Love of Lives Award for her dedication to improving the happiness and well-being of others.
The 31-year-old karateka has been based in Indonesia since in 2015 fleeing violence in Afghanistan. She offers free karate classes to refugees in the Cisarua area of Bogor, a city south of Jakarta.
She was awarded the prize by Chou Chin-hua (周進華), founder of the Taiwan-based Chou Ta-kuan Cultural and Educational Foundation, in Jakarta on Tuesday last week.
Photo: CNA
In her acceptance speech, Asadi said she always believed the only way to chase out darkness was to “turn on the light.”
This motivated her to run the Cisarua Refugee Shotokan Karate Club despite major financial challenges, she said.
“I believe that only by turning on the light can we win against the darkness. This is the only way out of our struggle,” Asadi said. “Let each one of us light a lamp in our own way, so that the world becomes brighter.”
Asadi and her husband, Ashraf Jawadi, established the club in 2016. It currently has about 40 members, including from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Sudan.
The club teaches refugees karate to help them reduce their anxiety, acquire skills and give them hope while they wait to be resettled to a third country. It also launched a physical training program for female refugees last year.
A black belt in karate, Asadi won three silver medals at the 2011 South Asian Games. She is the first Afghan woman to ever earn a medal at an international karate tournament.
Like many of Afghanistan’s Hazara people, who have long lived in fear of being targeted by militants due to their Shia Muslim faith, Asadi’s parents sought refuge in Pakistan in 1998, when Afghanistan was under the draconian rule of the Taliban.
Intrigued by martial arts since she was 13, Asadi has battled long odds, including the pervasive discrimination against women and girls practicing sports in Afghan society, to chase her dream of being a professional athlete and encourage girls to break gender barriers in sports.
After establishing herself as an acclaimed athlete who won dozens of titles in karate for Pakistan, Asadi returned to Afghanistan in 2011 because she wanted to compete on the world stage under the Afghan flag and to cultivate young talent for her country.
The 2011 victory created a buzz in Afghan media and attracted many girls to register for karate classes at a club Asadi founded earlier that year in Kabul, the first ever co-ed karate club in the country.
However, the club also made her a target of militants who considered the co-ed format unacceptable.
Facing threats of violence and intimidation against herself and her students from militants, Asadi and her family left Afghanistan for Indonesia in 2015. She has since been waiting to be resettled to a third country.
At the awards ceremony at the Taipei Economic and Trade Office in Jakarta, Asadi highlighted the plight of Afghan woman under Taliban rule since August 2021.
Asadi also took the opportunity to draw attention to the predicament of about 14,000 refugees based in Indonesia, many of whom have waited for as many as 10 years to be resettled.
The awards were created in 1998 by the foundation, which was founded by Chou and his wife, Guo Ying-lan (郭盈蘭), in memory of their eldest son, Chou Ta-kuan (周大觀), who died from cancer at the age of 10 in 1997.
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