Sochi:
To Boycott Or Not?The Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics is the Russian Federation's showpiece.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in it's success
by the Kremlin but,like the Olympics of 1936,it's meant to
be a showpiece only for Russian excellence in sports.
With Gays and Blacks being regularly beaten and attacked on the streets
of St Petersburg for even venturing to be present in the city,it is
no wonder that Sochi is being compared to the 1936 Nazi Summer Olympics held
in Berlin,Germany, under the Third Reich.
Just to remind younger readers, before and during the 1936 Olympics
held in Berlin, Jews were being beaten up across Germany by Nazi
thugs and the process of excluding Jewish children from
public and private schools had already begun as well as their parents'
exclusion from all the professions and government jobs
(The Anti-Semitic Legislation-1933-1939) throughout Germany,
a prelude to Kristallnacht on 9th and 10 November 1938 and the
concentration camps for Jews,Gypsies,Communists,Jehovah
Witnesses and anybody else opposing Hitler.
Now there is no comparing President Putin to Hitler but the
intolerance of racial minorities (not to mention Gays and Lesbians)
and the artificial creation of an 'honorary' Gay zone and
'honorary' facilities at Sochi for Gays and Lesbians-which are
'honorary'Gay-friendly for the duration of the Sochi Winter Olympics,
is eerily reminiscent of a hybrid between Apartheid South African and
Nazi Germany -where the legendary Jesse Owens and other African
American athletes were 'honorary White' guests-during the Berlin
1936 Olympics.
You cannot compare the Qatar 2020 Summer Olympics with Sochi
because the Qatar 2020 Olympics, to be held in Doha, will have
no 'honorary' athletes, only equal competitors.
There is no part of Qatar or Bahrain or Oman or indeed
any Gulf nation where 'White' Russians
are afraid to walk the streets in fear of their lives.
The same cannot be said of Qataris,Omanis,Bahrainis
or people of dark skin throughout many parts of the Russian
Federation where racial discrimination is rife and
institutionalised and,as in Apartheid South Africa, the
Police throughout the Russian Federation are the 'enforcers'
of the'Apartheid'code.
So the comparison between the forthcoming Qatar Olympics
has no bearing on the issues in hand.
Likewise the comparison between President Vladimir Putin and
Adolf Hitler is ridiculous.
The Russian Parliament is simply introducing Anti-Gay laws
they know will appeal to a neo-fascist and ultra-nationalist
Russian Orthodox Church - which exercises the same unbridled
powers inherited from it's Communist predecessor.
Is a boycott of Sochi justified?
The apologists for Apartheid South Africa used to say that the
Blacks will suffer more if South Africa was boycotted economically
politically and culturally.
We now know that the boycott helped White Apartheid South Africans
understand that their policies of institutional discrimination
were not acceptable to most of the civilised world and gave
heart to those struggling against oppression in the knowledge that
the world did care about their plight and was prepared to send
a visible signal to the oppressors and the oppressed.
The United States was the leader of the free world's ecomomic
and cultural isolation of South Africa at that time-whilst equally
maintaining it's stance that terrorism was not the way to end
the Apartheid regime.
If Sochi is boycotted by nations will the Russian people
(influenced by the Russian Orthodox Church) blame
Gays and Lesbians and extreme nationalists take revenge
against them? Of course they will-in the same was as Neo-Nazis
would take revenge against Jews whether or not the 1936 Olympics
had or had not been boycotted.
Personally I am not in favour of a boycott by the West of Sochi-
but for different reasons.
The presence of the world at the Sochi 2014 Olympics should
provide an ample platform for the civilised world to demonstrate
it's opposition to institutional discrimination based on race,
colour,ethnicity,disabilities or sexual orientation.
Indeed I believe it is the duty of every non-Russian Federation
competitor at Sochi from the developed world to show visible
support for their beleaguered Gay and Lesbian colleagues
in Russia and to remember that the civilised world can show
no greater antitheses than introducing laws which promote equality
and justice for all before the law.
Patrick Emek
August 9th 2013