Refugee Paralympic Team
Teddy Katz is the media attaché for the Tokyo 2020 Refugee Paralympic Team. He is helping to showcase the incredible stories of the six athletes who overcame insurmountable odds to get to Tokyo, demonstrating how change starts with sport.
Father’s dream driving first ever woman Para refugee athlete towards Tokyo 2020
Alia Issa overcomes bullying and discrimination to get to her first Paralympic Games
Alia Issa is hoping to make it to the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games to show young women with disabilities and other female refugees how sport can open a world of possibilities.
Issa wants to be one of six potential athletes and the first woman on the Refugee Paralympic Team. If the 20-year-old does make it to Tokyo, she will have her father to thank for helping her overcome bullying, discrimination and tragedy that might have held others back.
“My father taught me to dream big and actually his dream was for me to become a doctor,” she says through a translator.
In an hour-long interview, Issa is both engaging and charming with a non-stop smile on her face as she shares the twists and turns of her journey as a refugee and an athlete.
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Sport turns darkness into light for Syrian refugee athlete
Syria-born Anas Al Khalifa hopes to share message of hope with other displaced people
When Olympic medalist and now coach Ognyana Dusheva first met Anas Al Khalifa, a prospective athlete for the Refugee Paralympic Team at Tokyo 2020, she saw nothing but darkness in his eyes.
“I saw a scared young man. You could see it in his eyes. He was so unhappy. But looking at his body, his hands and shoulders, I could see how strong he was, how much potential he had.”
I asked him if he would like to try kayaking.
He said, “I don’t know what that is.”
Shortly after that first meeting, because it was the middle of winter in Germany and they could not go out onto the freezing cold river, she had him get into a kayak in a public swimming pool so Al Khalifa could try out paddling for the first time.
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Asylum seeking athlete who helped spur on the Refugee Paralympic Team
Shahrad Nasajpour ready to compete at his second Paralympic Games
When Shahrad Nasajpour heard the Olympics was going to have a refugee team at the Rio 2016 Games, a wild idea came to mind.
“In the spring of 2016, I was one of the first people to reach out to the International Paralympic Committee about having a team for Rio 2016. I just heard the news that the International Olympic Committee was going to form a team for the Olympics. Then it came to my mind, what about the Paralympics.”
Nasajpour, who competed at an international level as a junior Para athlete in discus, e-mailed leaders of the IPC. He was told at that point there was not a mechanism in place to support a refugee team.
Nasajpour had just arrived a few months before in the USA from Iran seeking asylum. Maybe he could try to compete for the USA, a helpful IPC staff person told him. But Nasajpour knew that was impossible because he needed US citizenship for that to happen.
Undeterred, he kept e-mailing and received a response a few months later with some good news.
The interest of the IPC management and their Governing Board in a potential team was growing, with its feasibility being developed. “I think my early e-mails helped ignite things,” Nasajpour says.
In August 2016, the IPC announced it would have the first ever Independent Paralympic Team with a refugee and asylee Paralympic athlete. Nasajpour was one of the two athletes to compete there.
But to get there would require him to defy the odds once again.
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Refugee Para swimmer Abbas Karimi driven to prove a lesson at Tokyo 2020
Born without arms, Karimi fled his home in Afghanistan to explore a new future
When Abbas Karimi stepped onto the podium after winning a silver medal in the S5 50m butterfly competition at the Mexico 2017 World Para Swimming Championships, he had trouble standing still and posing for the cameras.
“I was trying to smile but my lips were shaking, my body was shaking. I’m standing there thinking about how I’m representing 80 million displaced people from around the world. I’m the only refugee to ever win an international title like this. I made history. But I’m also thinking, I’m not done.”
Karimi is pinching himself thinking about how far he has come and the incredible odds and obstacles he has had to overcome from day one.
Karimi was born without arms in the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul.
“When you are born disabled without arms or legs or missing body parts in Afghanistan, you are considered hopeless,” Karimi says.
His parents tried to protect him by keeping him inside the house and focused on school, but Karimi just wanted to go out and play like all the other kids. He quickly learned that was not easy.
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Para taekwondo athlete Parfait teaches hope at Rwandan Refugee Camp
Parfait fled the civil war in Burundi and has been passing on his knowledge to others in the Mahama Refugee Camp
Parfait Hakizimana is hoping to have a cheering section unlike any other athlete at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics – his fellow refugees at the Mahama Refugee Camp in Rwanda.
“They are very happy for me. I have more respect now in the camp because yeah, they think I am going to achieve something great.”
Hakizimana is attempting to do something that no Paralympic athlete has done before – going directly from a refugee camp to compete at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. He is hoping to be one of six prospective members of the Refugee Paralympic Teams in Tokyo.
His journey to get there is the epitome of persistence and resilience, leaving behind family tragedy and using the power of sport to give many people including himself hope.
Hakizimana lives in the Mahama Refugee Camp in Rwanda, near the border with Burundi. It is the largest refugee camp in Rwanda with about 60,000 people living there. In October 2015, Hakizimana joined thousands of others to flee the violence and unrest in his country, Burundi.
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Random acts of kindness central to Ibrahim Al Hussein’s journey to Tokyo
Refugee Para athlete follows hopeful path to 2020 Paralympic Games
Few athletes have endured a more difficult but also a more hopeful journey to the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games than Ibrahim Al Hussein.
Ibrahim Al Hussein’s selfless act to rescue his friend in Syria set off a series of random acts of kindness from total strangers that helped make his journey towards Tokyo possible.
It all started rather innocently. Like many kids around the world, Al Hussein fell in love with sport at a young age. He started swimming when he was just five.
Al Hussein was born in 1988 into an athletic family in Deir al Zor, Syria, which is on the banks of the Euphrates River about 100 kilometres from Iraq.
His father was a swimming coach, who in his youth won two silver medals at the Asian Championships. Al Hussein dreamed of following in his father’s footsteps and perhaps even one day representing his country in the Olympics.