DISINFO: A gender test indicated that Algerian boxer Iman Khelif is a biological man

DISINFORMATION CASE DETAILS

  • Outlet: championat.com ( archive, original )
  • Date of publication: August 05, 2024
  • Article language(s): Russian
  • Countries / regions discussed: Algeria

DISINFO: A gender test indicated that Algerian boxer Iman Khelif is a biological man

SUMMARY

Iman Khelif was disqualified from the 2023 IBA World Championships after failing a gender test but was cleared by the IOC to compete in the Paris Games.

The saddest part of this story is that the problem wasn't Khelif's testosterone levels, which can be manipulated these days, but the gender test, which clearly showed that the Algerian boxer was a biological male.

RESPONSE

Pro-Kremlin narrative about the Paris 2024 Olympics, and hate speech against the LGBT community.

Algerian boxer Imane Khelif is neither a man nor a transgender person. The athlete was born a woman and always competed as a woman.

Khelif and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan were disqualified from the 2023 world championships after failing unspecified and not transparent eligibility tests for women’s competition from the now-banned International Boxing Association (IBA). This happened three days after Khelif won a fight against Azalia Amineva, a previously undefeated Russian athlete. "Based on the results of DNA tests, we identified several athletes who tried to deceive their colleagues and pretended to be women," said Umar Kremlev, IBA president. The tests showed that they had XY chromosomes."

However, the process was not transparent, and no evidence was presented that Khelif had XY chromosomes or elevated testosterone levels.

This lack of transparency would be unacceptable in major Olympic sports, and the IBA has been banned from the Olympics since 2019. The International Olympic Committee noted that the IBA's documents say the decision was made unilaterally by the IBA’s secretary general. An IBA board meeting later stated that "the athletes do not meet one of the eligibility criteria", without saying which one. They do not state whether Khelif has XY chromosomes, which are usually associated with men but can be an indication in females of a difference in sexual development. Neither boxer has ever been shown to have the genetic condition.

IOC Thomas Bach said: "We have two boxers who were born as women, raised as women, who have passports as women and who have competed for many years as women and this is a clear definition of a woman.

The IOC stated that Khelif and Lin were "victims of a sudden and arbitrary decision by the IBA" and that they were disqualified in 2023 without any due process.

See other cases about the Olympics such as God punished Paris after he was offended by Olympics opening ceremony and Olympic organisers made lesbians, transpersons, and prostitutes the heroes of the Last Supper.

Disclaimer

Cases in the EUvsDisinfo database focus on messages in the international information space that are identified as providing a partial, distorted, or false depiction of reality and spread key pro-Kremlin messages. This does not necessarily imply, however, that a given outlet is linked to the Kremlin or editorially pro-Kremlin, or that it has intentionally sought to disinform. EUvsDisinfo publications do not represent an official EU position, as the information and opinions expressed are based on media reporting and analysis of the East Stratcom Task Force.

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