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Home>Service> Awardees of Fervent Global Love of Lives Award> 26th Fervent Global Love of Lives Award 2023> Meena Asadi—A grand master of Afghan refugees in Indonesia.
Meena Asadi—A grand master of Afghan refugees in Indonesia.
 【Being famous in the world for her achievement in karate, Meena Asadi inspires refugees to live out hope. 】
Why can’t I be allowed to live freely as a boy just because I am a girl? The motivation that drives me to become a professional karate athlete is to contribute to breaking through "gender barriers".
—Meena Asadi
Being famous as a top karate athlete in the world, she encourages refugees to live out hope
    Meena Asadi, a female Afghan grand master of karate in Indonesia, has played for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Indonesia, striving to win awards, which is deeply moving.
    Meena Asadi, a former top karate athlete from Afghanistan, has been a refugee since she was a child. She learned karate in Pakistan and excelled. In 2010, at the age of 18, she made her international debut, winning a silver medal for Pakistan. However, it made her very sad that she could not represent Pakistan in the competition.
    It's so hard for the Afghanistan’s top female karate athlete in Indonesia to pursue her dream of competing for her own country. Meena Asadi, the former top female karate athlete from Afghanistan and the top female Afghan karate athlete being stranded in Indonesia now, was born in Afghanistan on October 12,1992. In 2012, she once won glory for Afghanistan at the South Asian Karate Championships, which has turned out to be her only competition for Afghanistan so far. She also wrote the most glorious history at that time by winning the first medal for Afghanistan in women's karate events. 
    Meena Asadi won the first medal in an international women's karate event for Afghanistan. Having been a refugee since her childhood, she returned to Afghanistan in 2012 to represent her country in the competition, only to be attacked by extremists. However, she has continued to pursue her dream, inspiring thousands of girls to break through gender barriers and live out hope.
    Meena Asadi was 12 years old in 2004 when she became a refugee in Pakistan after she had fled wars and gender discrimination in her native country Afghanistan. She took up karate in Pakistan and turned out to be an outstanding athlete. The Pakistan Association qualified her to represent Pakistan at the 2010 South Asian Games, where she won three silver medals. 
    Defying threats from extremists, she returned to Afghanistan and represented the Afghan national team at the South Asian Karate Championships held in India in 2012. She won 2 more silver medals for Afghanistan, which started a national trend for girls in Afghanistan to learn karate.
    However, things didn’t go well for a long time since the Taliban came to power who have denied Afghan women the right to work, denied Afghan girls the right to go to school. Women in Afghanistan cannot leave their homes unless they cover their faces and be accompanied by male relatives.
    Meena Asadi and her family were forced to flee Afghanistan again in 2015 for their lives had been threatened by extremists in Afghanistan. 
    Meena Asadi and her whole family, like tens of thousands of refugees stranded in Indonesia now, are still waiting for the opportunity to settle in a third country. She has seen refugees not being able to work, to go to school, or to do anything except to wait. Having been very frustrated and under great pressure, they set up “Cisarua Refugee Shotokan Karate Club”(CRSKC for short) with their self-reliance and self-improvement.
    In order to bring more hope to refugees from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and other countries who are stranded in Indonesia, Meena Asadi has always set an example and made every effort to let all refugees not only exercise, but also learn a skill through the karate club, calling for everyone to wave goodbye to the haze and embrace the sunshine.
    Then in 2018, Meena Asadi was awarded the 3rd degree certificate of Black Belt by Japan's famous " KarateNoMichi World Federation " (KWF). In order to further inspire people to live out their infinite possibilities and encourage them to integrate into Indonesian society, she was the first to participate in the online karate competition of Walikota Bogor Cup, Indonesia in 2021 and won the gold medal among 300 participants. It is an inspiration to many refugees from various countries who are stranded in Indonesia.
    From above we can see that Meena Asadi is neither afraid of gender discrimination, nor afraid of threats from extremists. She has always been bravely pursuing her dream, and has become famous in the world with karate. She has won honor for her motherland Afghanistan, as well as Pakistan, Indonesia and other countries where she was temporarily stranded. Furthermore, in Indonesia, she has founded karate clubs for refugees from various countries, calling on all refugees to learn a skill in addition to exercise and fitness. She has encouraged everyone to wave goodbye to the haze and set an example by calling on everyone to bravely meet the infinite hope, which touched Indonesia and stirred South Asia. And she is worthy of being a “ grand master of Afghan refugees in Indonesia."
Chances for refugees given by various countries are eagerly awaited
    Meena Asadi came to Indonesia this time and she has been waiting for resettlement in a third country with her family including her husband and daughter. Having seen that refugees suffered from great stress and became very depressed because they could not work, go to school or do anything but wait miserably, Meena Asadi she set up a karate club for refugees to learn skills or relieve their anxiety through sports.
    Meena Asadi’s Cisarua Refugee Shotokan Karate Club (CRSKC) is located in Cisarua District of Bogor County, which can only hold about 30 trainees, including children, teenagers and adults, who are mainly from Afghanistan. There are also refugees from Iran and Iraq.
    According to Meena Asadi, the refugees have no income, some of whom have been stranded for 10 or 12 years, with their life extremely hard. So she teaches for free. But running a karate club with monthly rent of 2 million rupiah (about NT $4,000) is not easy. Besides that, there is expense for training equipment purchases. Therefore, she often has to ask for help to make ends meet.
    Meena Asadi whose karate club has been open for almost seven years, said she didn’t know how much longer the club could last. "What I can do is just to keep trying my best."
    During the training courses, enthusiasm for karate from trainees of different ages can be seen. A group of Afghan girls between the ages of 7 and 9 volunteered to share their reasons for learning karate with the Central News Agency camera.
    Setayesh Jawadi said she liked karate and wanted to learn self-defense. Diana Jamal and Zahra Rezaie said they hoped to win gold medals like Meena Asadi in the future. Mahdia Hussaini said karate was fun and she loved coming to classes.
    Shaha Haidari is an Afghan teenager girl who loves martial arts. She said that karate has helped her a lot in real life by enhancing her confidence and courage. “In Afghanistan, taking up sports is taboo for women who are only expected to do things like cooking and cleaning. Meena Asadi is my idol. I look up to her and she inspires me a great deal.”
    Despite the limitations of refugee status, Meena Asadi never gave up on her dream.
    Recently she took part in an online karate competition of the Walikota Bogor Cup in Indonesia, winning a gold medal out of 300 competitors. She was also awarded the 3rd degree certificate of Black Belt by Japan's famous " KarateNoMichi World Federation " (KWF) in 2018.
    Meena Asadi has also been actively coordinating with the Indonesian Karate Association in recent years. Although the process is difficult, she finally managed to get refugees to be able to take the certification exam. Meena Asadi said “All that refugees need is a chance. If they are given a chance, they can show their talents." And that is her greatest hope for running the karate club.
    Don’t give up on hope for future
    The pandemic of COVID-19 has made it impossible for people to live a normal life with many been through isolation.
    Just imagine how hard it is to be strong enough to survive in the case of being in a foreign country for years or even more than a decade, unable to work, unable to send your children to school, unable to get medical care if you get sick, perhaps living on the streets, only waiting for the day when you can go to a third country.... .  
    This is a common situation for about 14,000 international refugees in Indonesia, some 8,000 of whom are from Afghanistan. Over the past few years, refugees living in Bogor, West Java Province, have had the opportunity to take up karate. More than 40 people, including young children, schoolchildren, adolescents and adults, attend regular classes at the karate club every week. It is of great significance to them whether to learn skills or to relieve stress.
    It is Meena Asadi, who won Afghanistan's first international medal in women's karate that trains them.
    Meena Asadi was born on October 12, 1992. She has been a refugee since her childhood. At the age of 19, she returned to compete for her country. She was reduced to be a refugee again due to the threats from Islamic extremists for her initiating a karate club for women. It has been more than seven years since Asadi and her husband, Ashraf Jawadi, their 8-year-old daughter, their 3-year-old son, and her mother-in-law were stranded in Indonesia, hoping for a chance to settle in a third country.  
    Having known the suffering of refugees since childhood, Asadi set up Cisarua Refugee Shotokan Karate Club (CRSKC) in Bogor County shortly after arriving in Indonesia in 2016, hoping to help refugees find the "glimmers of hope" in life through sports.
    Meena Asadi is an Afghan Hazara from Jaghori of Ghazni in south-eastern central Afghanistan. Located in the highland, the climate there is pleasant, with mountains, longitudinal valleys and rice fields weaving beautiful scenery.  
    The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and the war lasted for a decade which resulted in a mass impoverishment in Afghanistan. After the Soviet withdrawal, Afghanistan descended into a long civil war. Asadi's family originally lived on farming in Yagori, but the income was not enough to support the family. So they moved to Kandahar, south Afghanistan , after his father got a job there.
    The continuing wars in Afghanistan has caused millions to flee. At the time, about two million people fled to neighboring Pakistan. When the conservative, ultra-orthodox Taliban came to power in Kandahar in the mid-1990s, Meena Asadi 's parents took their three children to hide in Pakistan. Meena Asadi, who was only 7 then but saw all the hardships of refugees being homeless and losing their dignity, still has nightmares about what she had been through in her childhood.
    Wars have destroyed Meena Asadi 's home and everything she had in Afghanistan. She recalled that they had "nothing" and struggled to find a place to live when they first arrived in Pakistan. Her parents struggled to rent a room in a house with two other families where they shared the kitchen, bathroom and toilet. But they felt they couldn’t have asked more since they had "a place to stay together as a family."
    Meena Asadi was living in Quetta then, the capital of the Balochistan controlled by Pashtun. Her father learned Pashto in Kandahar, which enabled him to find a job of selling fruit with meagre income in Quetta. Her mother worked as an embroider and a domestic helper, and she, her 9-year-old brother and 5-year-old sister learned to weave carpets at the factory.
    Meena Asadi remembered that they had spent more than two months learning how to weave carpets before they started earning any money. A few months later, when the family's finances had been improved a little, her mother sent them to a charity school that provided free schooling for Afghan children. They went to school in the morning, continued to weave carpets at the factory in the afternoon and did their homework at night.
    Life in those years went on in the same way. Meena Asadi said her parents were emaciated by years of homelessness, but her mother always appeared to be strong in front of her children, telling them, "Don't lose hope for the future," while "I knew she was in great pain." Life hadn’t  change until she was 12 when she felt the call of sports.
Learned karate on the sly
    Meena Asadi said she would pass a martial arts studio on her way to and from school every day and she would always stop to watch the trainees practicing martial arts through the windows, finding it interesting. And she would try keeping the moves in mind. When she returned home, she practiced alone, but she could not remember all the moves clearly. When she returned to the martial arts club the next day, she often found that she had done some moves wrong.
    Meena Asadi said she became more and more obsessed with sports. But in the society where she was from, boys are free to play all kinds of sports, while girls are forbidden to even watch them. Some also forbid women to work, study or engage in other activities. "Why can’t girls be allowed to do that? My childhood was filled with questions like this that no one could answer."
    Meena Asadi 's family was also influenced by the Afghan social norms, and most of them were against her playing sports. Grandma often warned her that girls would better not do sports in case that they would hurt their bodies. Grandma was especially worried that she would lose her virginity because of sports which in grandma’s opinion would make her future life very miserable. But her family's resistance didn't stop Asadi. Instead, she said, it was "what motivated me to try to break through gender barriers."  
    It was just then that she met two sisters from Afghanistan who had grown up in Iran. They talked about her situation, and the two sisters encouraged her not to give up so easily. Since there was no room for the girls in the karate club, they practiced in a small room with no facilities and dirty floor. They would clean it before they started to practice so that they wouldn’t breathe in too much dust.
    Meena Asadi said her parents paid to let her take English lessons, but she skipped the lessons and instead went to a martial arts studio to practice. Whenever she came to the studio, she felt excited, but also worried that her family would catch her. A few months later, her family became suspicious when she failed to write her English homework or bring her grades back home. They eventually found out that she had been spending the time of English classes in practicing martial arts so they banned her from going to the martial arts studio.
    This made Meena Asadi very sad. She had been practicing martial arts for only a few months, but she was keen to learn and she had made rapid progress, which made her even want to practice more. The family's ban was a big blow to her, she said: "Suddenly the whole world didn’t make any sense. I had no interest in anything and felt very down."
    It wasn't long before Meena Asadi decided to earn support from her family. She decided to start with her father. It is generally considered shameful and dishonorable for a girl to play sports in their society.
    And relatives also said so, which made it hard for a relatively traditional father not to be influenced. She cried and begged her father to let her continue to practice martial arts. He might have been persuaded a little, but he could not ignore the opinions of others. 
    Although she was not allowed to go to the martial arts studio, Asadi did not stop practicing at home. She kept in touch with her friends with whom she practiced martial arts. One day, her friends told her that the studio would hold a contest and they would sign up for her. She knew her family would never approve, but it had always been her dream to compete. "I used to imagine myself in the ring, facing my opponents and beating them," she said.
    Meena Asadi told her father the news with anticipation and trepidation. Her father strongly opposed her participation, saying that if she insisted on participating, she would ask her uncle to beat her. Her father also threw her martial arts clothes and other equipment onto the roof, so that she could not get them.
    On the day of the competition, Meena Asadi 's father went to the competition, she instantly ran to the roof to get her martial arts clothes and other equipment and hurried to the martial arts studio. She made it to the competition. Her father's eyesight was not good, and all the trainees were in martial arts uniforms. So her dad could not recognize her far away among the competitors. Not until he heard her name read out, did he know that she was present. As she waited to come on, she was very excited.
Won her first medal in life
    Meena Asadi won her first medal in that competition. The audience gave her a warm applause when she was declared the winner. After coming back home, my father said that he could not believe that she had secretly joined in the competition and won. Her father felt both happy and angry. It was the first time that she had won her father's approval. However, he still said, "Sports are not for girls."
    She practiced on and off due to her father's disapproval and support now and then. Her father would stop her when there were relatives and friends questioning why he let his daughter play sports. "It was like playing cat and mouse." Later, she told her father that the doctor had said her sore feet had to be recovered with the help of taking exercise. This "excuse" worked and her father didn’t stop her anymore. But her relatives were still against it and sometimes they would quarrel with her family about it.
    Meena Asadi changed to learn karate in 2005 after having practiced at the martial arts studio for a year which was mainly because there were many karate competitions of Nations Cup or other levels in Pakistan at the time. That appealed to her, and she hoped to participate in more competitions.
    In the same year, Meena Asadi joined the Hazara Shotokan Karate Club in Quetta and practiced diligently under the guidance of a coach. A few months later, she competed in the provincial competition in Baluchistan and won a medal. After that she went on to win many national competitions and was invited to join the WAPDA karate team.  
    WAPDA boasts a glorious team history for it has cultivated many excellent karate fighters in Pakistan. Meena Asadi joined the team, practiced hard and continued to make grogress, not only adding medals to the team, but also proving her qualification and her spirit of fighting. In 2010, she was invited to join the Pakistan national team and won 3 bronze medals at the South Asian Games (SAF) held in Bangladesh.
    Despite having a successful career, Meena Asadi was not happy. Pakistan asked her to change her name to Zohra to join the national team. Meena Asadi said "I am frustrated and sad" when she could not use her birth name to win glory on behalf of Hazara from Afghanistan. On the one hand, there were still relatives who continued opposing her participation in sports or competitions; On the other hand, she was also discriminated against by her teammates in the Pakistan national team.
For both the first and the last time to win glory for her motherland
    Meena Asadi decided to return to Afghanistan in 2011, full of ambition, enthusiasm and hope to serve her country. However, due to the severe gender discrimination in the conservative society, she encountered many challenges and her life was threatened, which she hadn’t expected.
    After she first returned to her hometown of Yagori and set up the first karate club for women in Afghanistan, she immediately faced the intimidation and obstruction from fundamentalist Islamic scholars. She had to flee to the capital Kabul. In Kabul, where the social conduct is less conservative, her determination to teach female trainees became rather strong. The karate club was finally founded in Dasht-e-Barchi, a district in western Kabul, in August 2011.
    Because it has been generally and deeply believed in Afghan society that women should not do sports, the karate club had only a few female trainees when founded, making it the first karate club in Afghanistan to have both male and female trainees learn karate together.
    In November of the same year, Meena Asadi, wearing the national flag of Afghanistan, competed in the South Asian Karate Championship in Delhi, India, where she won 2 bronze medals, creating the history of Afghanistan's first medal in an international women's karate event. It was widely reported by Afghan media and picked up by social media, causing a stir in Afghan society.
    Meena Asadi became the subject of intense media coverage. Many girls saw her story and joined in the karate club.
    But at the same time, Meena Asadi was also targeted by Islamic extremists, who continued to harass the karate club. She did not back down though. Instead, she continued to lead her trainees to practice, and actively participated in domestic competitions, and achieved excellent results. In 2013, five female trainees were selected to join the Afghan national team. Their stories again were reported by social media. However, extremists tried to force the karate club to close with violence.
Pursuing the dream of karate—there was no way to serve her country but to go far away from it
    According to Meena Asadi, one of the female trainees was threatened and forced to flee Afghanistan. After being coerced many times, she had no choice but to put aside her dream of returning to Afghanistan. She had to stay away from her homeland again for the safety of her family and herself.  
    In 2015, she finally settled in Indonesia after she had traveled to New Delhi, India, Malaysia. Meena Asadi said leaving Afghanistan was "the most difficult decision of my life." Her passion for karate, her ambition of opening a karate club where she can train both men and women, the challenges she had overcome, coaching dozens of students every day, and her desire to win more competitions at home and abroad, all of these have to go.
    Meena Asadi buried these dreams deeply in her heart and set out on an unknown journey where she must endure the pain of homelessness. It was raining on October 25, and the sky was crying as she was. When the plane took off, she saw Kabul was washed away by rain and smoke, and she saw how fresh and beautiful it was. It was only when she landed in New Delhi that she was brought back to the reality of being a refugee again.
    When they first arrived in Indonesia, the differences in language and culture initially made it difficult for Meena Asadi and her family to adapt. But they had to start a new life and the situation in her hometown made her realize that there was "no turning back".
    Meena Asadi and her family came to register at UNHCR Indonesia to obtain refugee status.
    Russia invaded Ukraine in February this year and by now the war has caused 5 million Ukrainians to flee their homes, exacerbating the global refugee crisis. Wars and human rights persecution have been constantly going on in Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan and Myanmar for years. According to the statistics of the United Nations Refugee Agency, there are nearly 80 million refugees in the world. But the pace of taking in refugees in third countries is far more slow with only less than 1% of the refugees having been resettled.
    Indonesia has not signed the United Nations Convention on refugees. It does not take in refugees, and it does not allow them to work or attend school, and it does not provide basic care either. The Indonesian government has always ignored the circumstances of refugees in Indonesia, claiming that it is UNHCR or the International Organization for Migration which is also part of the United Nations system that should take the responsibility.
    UNHCR often explains to refugees that there is nothing they can do about the slow progress of resettlement applications, taking third countries such as the United States, Canada and Australia, which take in refugees, having their own refugee policies as the excuse. The International Organization for Migration has several cluster houses in Jakarta, Bogor and other cities that serve as shelters for refugees, while actually less than half of them have been taken in.
With great self-reliance, she set up the karate club
    Meena Asadi, who has always had the courage to face difficulties and does not compromise with fate, finally found a site in January 2016 after several months of running around, and set up the current " Cisarua Refugee Shotokan Karate Club (CRSKC) ".
    The karate club, which still looks old and shabby, had no facilities at first. Meena Asadi and her husband had no one to support them. They saw the circumstances of other refugees so they were determined to keep the dream alive, hoping to shine a light on their miserable lives. It started with five trainees and now has more than 40, mostly of them from Afghanistan, refugees from Iran and Iraq also included.
    Running a karate club is not easy, with rent, electricity, karate clothes for trainees, training equipment all costing money. Asadi knows refugees can't afford it. Not only is the class for free, but also when she sees refugees on the road just sitting around in a depressed mood all day long, she encourages them to come to the club. It's good for them even if they just exercise their strength and interact with others.
    Meena Asadi qualified for the 3rd degree certificate of Black Belt in February 2018 by participating in a Karate promotion examination held by KarateNoMichi World Federation (KWF) based in Tokyo.
    About two years after the establishment of the karate club Meena Asadi also began trying to contact the Karate Federation in Bogor for a chance to compete in karate events. Meena Asadi 's trainees have also gained approval in a series of competitions, and the karate club is earning popularity among refugee communities in Indonesia and other countries.
Inspire more refugees to live out hope
    Members of the karate club made their debut at the Ciomas Cup in Bogor in March 2018. 10 participants of Meena Asadi and her trainees joined in the contest and won seven awards. In August of that year, she and seven of her trainees competed in the Bogor Open Karate Championship and they won five medals.
    Many trainees from her karate club qualified for promotion at the promotion examination held every two years by Institute Karate-Do Indonesia (INKAI), the oldest and largest Karate organization in Indonesia in 2018. In 2019, a female member of the karate club won a silver medal at the INKAI Karate Championship.
    Classes at the karate club were suspended for several months due to the COVID-19. But Meena Asadi and her trainees did not give up the opportunity to make progress.
    Four trainees (two men and two women) competed at the Bogor Cup Pakuan Karate Championship in 2010 who all won medals. The 2011 Governor of Bogor Cup was held online in April, with Meena Asadi winning the gold medal. The next year Meena Asadi and a trainee won gold medals at the INKAI Champions Cup in January.
    Meena Asadi has managed to run the karate club for years, and many refugees in Indonesia have considered the club as their common home, where they could punch, kick, and yell with everyone to make their bodies sweat profusely, to forget the hardships of life for a while and to ease the anxiety of an uncertain future. Many of the young trainees said Meena Asadi set an example for them and they “decided to be like their teacher in the future."  
    In order to help more female refugees, Meena Asadi has been teaching physical fitness courses designed for women since 2022. According to her, it is easy for male refugees to get together and play ball games, while it is more difficult for female refugees to join. And female refugees are more likely to lack channels to express their psychological pressure. More than 20 women have attended the course by now, and she hopes the physical fitness courses will help them maintain physical and mental health.
    The Taliban, an armed organization that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, imposed a strict version of Islamic law that banned female education or most public activities and massacred religious and ethnic minorities, including the Shiite Hazara.
    NATO invaded Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks that happened in New York City on September 11, 2001, in order to hunt down the Taliban, who were sheltering the al-Qaeda terrorist group. After 20 years of war, the United States and other countries gradually withdrew their troops in 2021, and the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, plunging the country into a serious humanitarian crisis.
    The lives of countless nobodies would suddenly disappear or be crushed with the overturning of power. With Afghanistan falling to the control of Taliban again, many Afghan refugees in Indonesia came to the streets crying that their country was something of being dead and that the way back home was even longer. Even Meena Asadi said she was afraid that she would never have the chance to compete for her country again. But she keeps the faith of never giving up on hope and she hopes that her trainees will become world champions in the future.