World Cup: Is Qatar Sportswashing?

The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, often referred to as the Nazi Olympics, were used by Hitler to project a vision of Germany as a powerful, modern state that was peaceful and tolerant. A year before the games took place, U.S. Amateur Athletic Union president Jeremiah Mahoney tried to convince athletes to boycott Berlin. Mahoney pointed out that the games would serve only to legitimize a regime that had excluded “Non-Aryans” from athletics.

Mahoney’s boycott initially drew support from track and field star Jesse Owens. However, Owens later changed his mind, in part due to the hypocrisy of protesting racism in Germany. As Owens’ coach Larry Snyder said in reference to America’s anti-Black racism, “Why should we oppose Germany for doing something that we do right here at home?”

Owens went on to win four gold medals, making a mockery of Hitler’s claims of Aryan superiority. However, Susan Bachrach, a historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, notes that New York Times political reporter Frederick Birchall came out after the games saying the Olympics had “put Germans back in the fold of nations and even made them more human again.” Three years later, Germany invaded Poland.

The apartheid regime in South Africa used sport to add shiny gloss to its abysmal record. Rugby and cricket tours in particular were platforms on which the government showcased the seeming normalcy of racial segregation, with international teams competing against makeshift Black teams assembled to create the impression of a “separate but equal” society.

The movement to boycott South African sport began with the International Olympic Committee effectively banning South Africa in 1964. The fight by activists to boycott South African athletics, particularly rugby and cricket, would continue until the 1980s. According to ex-sportsman and South African historian Andre Odendaal, it was the combination of sports boycotts and economic sanctions that dealt a fatal blow to the apartheid regime. This wasn’t necessarily because white South Africans changed their minds about segregation but rather because they grew tired of their pariah status and their country’s exclusion from choice entertainment.

It was this shift in public sentiment that helped bring President F.W. de Klerk to the negotiating table with Nelson Mandela, according to Odendaal, who points out that it’s important to question the idea of “sacrifice” that athletes must endure in being prohibited from play. He told OZY, “If you look at the human tragedy of apartheid against the discomfort some sportsmen felt over a twenty-year period, there is no equivalence.”

Over 200 human rights organizations objected to China hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics due to the country’s stained record. This record included credible reports publicized by the U.N. Human Rights Committee in 2018, which found China had detained as many as a million Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups in “re-education camps,” while imprisoning as many as hundreds of thousands more.

In the run-up to this year’s games, the U.S., Canada and the U.K. announced a diplomatic boycott, meaning they refused to send diplomatic representatives. Some nations discussed the prospect of an athletes’ boycott. However, according to professor of politics and government at Pacific University Jules Boykoff, for athletes this is sometimes too much, as a given year’s games are often their “only chance at Olympic glory. Sacrificing this chance on the altar of human rights policy is a big ask.” As South African historian Odendaal indicated, however, it is an important calculus as the effects of a sports boycott can be considerable.

China was seen to be using the games for propaganda purposes right from the opening ceremony, in which Dinigeer Yilamujiang — a Uyghur cross-country skier — was one of two Chinese athletes to light the cauldron. Human Rights Watch tweeted, “The Chinese government is not just committing crimes against humanity, but also flaunting it.”

The 2018 soccer World Cup in Russia was allowed to proceed despite a laundry list of concerns, including the annexation of parts of Ukraine in 2014, the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and a troubling record on LGBTQ rights. Both the U.K. and Australia declared a diplomatic boycott.

Guardian soccer journalist Barney Ronay agreed with many at the time who felt that a player boycott would not affect Russia’s foreign policy. However, as politics professor Tatiana Zonova of Moscow’s MGIMO University argues, because the calls to boycott the tournament went unheeded, it demonstrated to Putin “the impotence of Russia’s detractors.” Zonova says that the 2018 World Cup helped burnish Russia’s image. As was reported by the BBC at the time, Vladimir Putin himself felt the World Cup was a great achievement and that visitors had praised Russia for its “hospitality and friendliness.” Three-and-a-half years later, Russia invaded Ukraine.

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Eyebrows around the world lifted in 2010 when Qatar won the honor of hosting the 2022 World Cup. Not considered a favorite in the application process, Qatar spent nearly $200 million on its bid, according to The Guardian. The U.S. Department of Justice has since revealed that money was paid to five members of FIFA’s board to vote for Qatar. (Officials also received bribes to support Russia’s 2018 bid.)

In February 2021, Amnesty International reported that 6,500 migrant workers — who had been paid as little as $11.20 a day to labor in 104-degree weather — had perished in Qatar since 2010. According to the Qatari government, officials are now working to end such human rights violations. Amnesty International says that Qatar stifles free expression and denies women fundamental rights, while consensual sexual relations between two men is punishable by up to seven years’ imprisonment.

At present, few in the sports world are advocating for a diplomatic or players’ boycott of the 2022 World Cup, although former England player and presenter Gary Lineker reportedly turned down the chance to host the event due to human rights concerns. David Beckham, in contrast, signed a $200 million deal to be the “face” of the tournament. Netherlands coach Louis van Gaal called the selection of Qatar as host “b******t.” In last year’s qualifying matches, players from Norway and Germany wore shirts that said “Human Rights.”

Yet, as the tournament draws closer, fewer such protests are being reported. On The Guardian’s “Football Weekly” podcast, journalist James Elis perhaps summed up the feelings of many when he admitted to thinking it’s “unfair” that sports fans are asked to grapple with such moral dilemmas. “I have got a few months to decide how I feel about it,” he said.

What are your thoughts on the effectiveness of sportswashing in putting an attractive facade on problematic regimes? Does boycotting make a difference?

Share your thoughts with us at OzyCommunity@Ozy.com.