THE WHITE LABEL ATHLETE: HYPOCRISY OF THE WEST
Get punished for something you can't control
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THE WHITE LABEL ATHLETE: HYPOCRISY OF THE WEST
Ever since last year, when the Olympic Games in Paris started, a fire burned within. An itch to write a piece on the questionable international response against Russian athletes.
As a tennis fan watching tournaments on TV, I’d noticed Russian players’ flags were no longer presented in their profiles. During the Olympic Games, Russian athletes were coerced into giving up the right to perform under their country’s flag or risk getting banned from competition. Many of the athletes’ performances were censored from broadcasting.
Today, when searching for the result of Aryna Sabalenka, the #1 women’s tennis player from Belarus, currently competing at the US Open, the information couldn’t be retrieved on their website when searching for Belarus in the dropdown menu. Apparently, Belarusian athletes face the same confrontational situation as their Russian counterparts.
Ever since I was a child, I remember geopolitical tensions sparking fires around the globe, but never did this lead to any attempt to dehumanise athletes from whatever country they hailed from. Moreover, back in the good old days, the mainstream media, as well as politicians, stated firmly that sports and politics should never be mingled in one jar. Sports brought people together, geopolitics divided.
In recent years, this principle has shifted, particularly for Russian sports figures. The US Open’s approach to Belarusian players exemplifies this inconsistency. These world-class athletes are an integral part of the tennis world tour, yet they are sidelined and treated as second-class citizens. While press briefings avoid politics—rightly separating athlete from state—this division is undermined by the federations themselves. If individuality and politics are kept apart in discourse, why do federations enforce collective punishment?
Shouldn’t we reflect on the current hypocrisy that the West has induced and enforced within global federations? Why do these federations all take the same stance? If you consider athletes from these countries as ‘white labels’, why don’t we uphold the same standards for athletes hailing from countries like North Korea, China, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, and the USA for that matter, a country that fueled a staggering number of 469 wars throughout the world since 1798, of which 251 have been induced since 1991 (Norton 2022).
Why do we allow Israeli athletes to proudly defend the honour of their country when Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant have the same outstanding arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court as Putin does? Also, Presidents Omar al-Bashir (Sudan) and Rodrigo Duterte (Philippines) are on the same list. None of the latter’s athletes are facing any repercussions. It’s quite obvious Israel is a close ally of the West, so apparently different moral and ethical standards apply. Many other dictators around the globe are condemned by the United Nations, but all of their athletes remain eligible to play under the flag of their country of origin.
Talking about morals and ethics. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is considered the stronghold of global sportsmanship and the forebearer of equality amongst athletes. Their three values are excellence, respect, and friendship. The fundamental rights charter of the IOC states clearly: “ Every individual must have access to the practice of sport, without discrimination of any kind in respect of internationally recognised human rights within the remit of the Olympic Movement.”
In my humble opinion, respect is lacking towards these individual athletes. No one on this earth, not even you, had any choice when it comes down to choosing your parents, nor the country you were born in. It’s not because some parties in this global network consider a third party as an enemy that athletes from these countries have to be held responsible for the decisions made by their governments. Let’s not be naïve, as an individual within a country structure, you haven’t got any power, nor a direct say. It surpasses the athlete’s prowess completely. So, why be punished for something you haven’t got any control over?
What else can we read in the Charter of the IOC? “Recognising that sport occurs within the framework of society, sports organisations within the Olympic Movement shall apply political neutrality.” It can’t be stated more clearly. All major sports federations are de facto part of the Olympic Movement and require political neutrality. Que? Not when it comes down to Russian, and now even Belarusian athletes, who were ‘unlucky’ to be born in the ‘wrong’ country.
In Chapter 6 of the IOC Charter, we read: “The Olympic Games are competitions between athletes in individual or team events and not between countries.” Read that again. “Equally, the practice of sport as a human right requires inclusion and non-discrimination, safety, respect for basic needs and a healthy environment,” as noted in the Human Rights Framework of the IOC. Non-discrimination? Right.
The IOC has fewer problems safeguarding rights when it comes to the LGBTQ+ athletes. The IOC’s charter literally states that they respect the gender choice of every athlete, and these athletes should be free to compete in the gender-attributed category of their choice. We have seen the results, a man beating up a woman in boxing, but that was less of an issue.
We may assume some of these ‘white label’ athletes would be proud to ‘defend’ their country’s flag on international tournaments, even if their governments may be intertwined in wars or geopolitical powerplays. As an athlete, sports supersedes politics. They may be proud of their social, cultural, or historical inheritance without supporting contemporary positions of ever-changing politics. I can’t help but imagine that many of today’s discriminated athletes self-censor and don’t even dare to oppose the ‘white flag’ discourse imposed on them.
Some tennis players don’t want to shake hands with their ‘white flagged’ counterparts (Ukrainian players have a long-standing policy of not shaking hands with Russian athletes), just to make a woke-ish statement induced by Western propaganda. In toto, the complete opposite of what sport should stand for, and which is also stated in the IOCs charter: “equality and non-discrimination amongst athletes”.
Shouldn’t athletes who refuse to interact with their counterparts be expelled for violating international principles set forth by the sport federations themselves? Courtesy and honour over politics? Isn’t that what sports should constitute?
If the IOC and its International Federations want to live up to their own standards, they should refrain from any politization within the sphere of sports in general and reinstate the human rights for every athlete, whether or not they agree with their countries’ political stances. Western hypocrisy and the absence of moral and ethical reflections seem to remain the West’s indisputable prerogative without ever being challenged. Or maybe that’s not allowed either? Sorry, my bad.
LINKS
https://www.usopen.org/en_US/players/country.html
https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Documents/International-Olympic-Committee/IOC-Publications/EN-Olympic-Charter.pdf
NORTON, B., 2022. U.S. launched 251 military interventions since 1991, and 469 since 1798. Monthly Review. Tufts University.
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