Instead of a competition of who is the biggest victim, the IOC has enabled a situation in which human rights violators like Iran and China are granted a free pass for their abhorrent actions against their own people, and even against their own athletes. Sadly, this cowardice in the face of clear-cut oppression isn’t new for the IOC.
It is respectable that the IOC does what they can to keep politics out of sport. Yet there are limits, and the situation in China today, as well as the behavior of the rogue Iranian regime, are most certainly beyond politics. Yet throughout history whenever the IOC needed to take a stand, they were tragically too late. Who can forget the 1936 Berlin Olympics ahead of WWII, in which the IOC willfully turned a blind eye to Hitler’s horrific persecution of minorities and rapidly increasing oppression of Jews. Instead of canceling the games, the IOC actually gave legitimacy to Hitler’s regime. It is well know that the Nazi regime in fact downplayed their racism and antisemitism only for the Games, a tactic that has since been replicated by China for similar reasons.
In the case of South Africa, the IOC only banned the country from participation in the Olympics in 1963 and continued until South Africa stopped their policies of discrimination. Yet apartheid officially began in 1948, and only after massive international uproar did the IOC do anything at all.
Fast forward to 1972 and the horrific Munich massacre in which the Israeli Olympic team was targeted by Palestinian terrorists and murdered in their dorms. Instead of pausing the games after the Israeli athletes and their coach were murdered, Avery Brundage, the president of the IOC at the time, famously declared, “The games must go on” – an appalling show of brazen disrespect. But Brundage’s statements were par for the course. After all, it was Brundage who cozied up to Hitler for the 1936 Games, and Brundage who fought back fiercely against the cancellation of the Berlin Games due to Hitler’s gross human rights violations. Sadly, Brundage’s antisemitic and racist legacy seems to live on today in the IOC.
At every step of the way, the IOC drags their feet in taking the most basic of actions for human rights – even when it violates the rights of athletes. Since the Iranian Revolution, the Iranian regime has oppressed dissenters, religious minorities, women and countless others.
In the last several months alone, Iran has executed three elite athletes for political dissent, including national champion wrestler Navid Afkari. In addition, they have arrested, tortured and interrogated coaches, family members, and fellow athletes. Most recently, Iran executed boxer Ali Mutairi. For years, Iran has demanded Iranian athletes throw matches in order to avoid interaction with Israeli athletes. This is completely antithetical to the values the Olympic Games stand for. Global sporting bodies in various sports have demanded the IOC take action against Iran. Yet the IOC has done nothing to defend Iranian athletes or the spirit of sportsmanship of the Olympic Games.
Most egregiously, the IOC is continuing with the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, despite China’s well-documented genocide of Uyghur Muslims. One doesn’t need to look back very far to see how China already used the Olympic Games as a tool of legitimacy. In the 2008 games, human rights activists spoke out and warned about the increasingly authoritarian Chinese regime and its treatment of dissidents. Instead of recognizing their mistake, the IOC has emboldened China to continue their campaign of terror – and intensify it as well. From ethnic cleansing to concentration camps to forced sterilizations to forced labor for the Olympic Games itself, the IOC has blood on their hands.
The values of the Olympic Games are a beautiful thing that can unite people throughout the world. When nations violate that and refuse to abide by the standards of cooperation in international sports, they must be held accountable and banned from participating in and hosting events like the Olympics. Now if only the International Olympic Committee could themselves live up to their own standards.
The writer is the CEO of Social Lite Creative and a research fellow at the Tel Aviv Institute.