Protesters call on FIFA to kick Iran out of World Cup, citing regime involvement

LOS ANGELES, June 10 : Instead of pride, many Iranian-Americans feel shame about the Iran team's participation in the World Cup and are demanding that FIFA boots the country out of the competition, protesters said on Wednesday. 

The team's presence is outraging many who see the Iranian government as using the competition as a way to sportswash its killing tens of thousands of dissidents since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, with many thousands killed as recently as during widespread protests in January. Those deaths have included hundreds of athletes, protesters said. 

"Bringing them here and having them play basically presents a calm face to the world, when in fact back home there is no calmness, there's only execution and suffering that the regime has brought," said 21-year-old American-born Ryan Salami, whose parents both fled Iran, in an interview at a protest in front of L.A. City Hall. 

Many protesters backed the National Council of Resistance of Iran's call to dump Iran out of the tournament. Photographs of dozens of Iranian athletes who died in government custody were spread in an impromptu open-air gallery in front of Los Angeles City Hall. Speakers including a number of former Iran national team players mourned athletes who they say died after crossing the government and being taken into custody.

"This is the ayatollahs' team," said Asghar Adibi, who was a member of the Iran national team in 1970, to the crowd. He said the team was controlled by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and it was wrong to allow an organisation "that kills people, tortures people, to have a team representing them".

Protesters had a variety of views about whether the Iran players themselves should be seen as part of the regime. Salami