In 2008, the 29th Olympic Games will be held in Beijing. Already
human rights groups are calling on the international sports
community to use the Games to push for wide-ranging changes in
China. They are also warning that Beijing will not allow the
visiting media free access to all aspects of Chinese society.
The case of China is not the first one in which politics and
sports have been closely entwined.
Hamburg,
Jan 17
Although most people would agree that politics and sport should not
be mixed, few would disagree with the statement that they do. Most
sporting organizations jealously guard against any political
interference and football's world controlling body FIFA, for
instance, has time and again suspended members if any overtly
political interference becomes known.
Only last year, Iran was briefly suspended by FIFA because of
government interference in football structures there.
But despite the best efforts of sporting organizations, history is
littered with incidents where political pressure has been applied
through sports.
While Adolf Hitler used the 1936 Olympic Games to showcase Nazi
Germany and his fascist ideology, after the Second World War
sporting events were used more and more as a means of political
protest, with the boycott the weapon of choice.
Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon boycotted the 1956 Melbourne Olympics in
protest at the Suez war while Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands
withdrew over the Soviet invasion of Hungary.
Five years later, FIFA suspended South Africa over its apartheid
policies. South Africa was banned from Olympic competition by the
time of the 1964 Tokyo Games and six years later, the International
Cricket Council followed suit.
In 1976, Tanzania led 22 African countries in a boycott of the 1976
Montreal edition because of the presence of New Zealand, which had
sent a rugby team to tour South Africa.
Political boycotts now seemed to be on the verge of crippling the
Olympic movement as the US, followed by West Germany and Japan,
boycotted the Moscow Olympics in 1980 in protest at the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan.
The Soviet bloc retaliated by boycotting the Los Angeles Olympics
four years later while North Korea, Cuba, Ethiopia and Nicaragua
refused to send athletes to the 1988 Seoul Games.
While the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War seemed
to mark the end of this particular boycott cycle, sporting events
were still used to apply political pressure on certain countries.
The Olympic Council of Asia refused to allow Iraq to compete at the
1990 Asian Games in Beijing because of its invasion of Kuwait while
in 1994, Denmark became European champions by winning a final
tournament they had not even qualified for.
The Scandinavians had finished second in their qualifying group
behind Yugoslavia. However, shortly before the start of the finals
the UN imposed sanctions against Yugoslavia and UEFA decided to bar
them from the finals, inviting Denmark instead.
One person who believes sporting boycotts are a useful weapon in
forcing countries to address political issues they would otherwise
likely ignore is Joe Ebrahim, former president of the South African
Council of Sport (SACOS), the major anti-apartheid sporting
organization in the country.
Ebrahim says that while the principle of political non-interference
in sport is a correct one, the reality is different.
"I think one of the striking examples at the moment is Israel where
you find that Israel is accepted internationally in the sports world
and yet people don't recognize that Israel is actually in many ways
an oppressor in terms of Palestine and the Palestinian people," he
says.
The South African says that Israel might not be the only country
where a sport boycott might be appropriate.
"There are other countries - if one goes around the world you are
going to find situations where you can justify it on the basis that
the countries are aggressors and that they are invading neighboring
countries.
"There are also examples where countries are acting oppressively in
so far as the local population is concerned."
He concedes though that it makes little sense to use a sports
boycott if the country is not prominent in sport. "Unless they are
very prominent in sport than it does not have much effect.
"It wont achieve much is a country is ranked something like 180th in
the world ranking in comparison to a country that is say in the top
50 of the rankings.
"A sports boycott will not work in all instances, that one also has
to recognize, so you have to look at the circumstances, look at
where that country is in terms of international sports contact."
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