Imagine that you are a woman who can run 100 meters in a shade over 12.5 seconds just like Michaela Kargbo of Sierra Leone does. Or that you’re a middle-distance specialist who can do 800 meters in two minutes flat like Tetiana Petliuk of Ukraine. Or a long-distance runner who can match the sub-33-minute performance of Dulce Maria Rodrigues of Mexico in the 10,000 meters. The only problem is that you are a woman from Saudi Arabia and so, are not allowed to compete.
While I certainly got caught up in the brilliance of such athletes as swimmer Michael Phelps and sprinter Hussein Bolt at the Beijing Olympics, for me the biggest story of the games (that didn’t seem to get a whole lot of attention) concerned the Olympic team from Saudi Arabia. But I suppose that’s because this exposes the blatant hypocrisy of the entire Olympics movement.
In 1964 the Olympics were held in Tokyo. Leading up to those games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that South Africa would be barred from the games because of its apartheid policies. The IOC said this decision would be overturned only if South Africa renounced racial discrimination in sport and ended its policy of not allowing competition between black and white athletes. South Africa then said it would include seven non-whites on its Olympic team, but that wasn’t good enough for the IOC. South Africa was out. The IOC, after all, was an organization steeped in principle and fair play.
For almost three decades following South Africa’s ouster from the Olympics, that country was a touchy subject as far as the Olympics were concerned. At the 1976 Montreal Olympics, more than two dozen countries boycotted the games because New Zealand’s cricket team had been touring South Africa. Some of the countries that took this stance included such leading bastions of human rights as Libya, Iraq, and Iran.
In 1991, South Africa finally repealed its apartheid laws, and the next year at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, it officially returned to the Olympics fold with great aplomb. Nevertheless, for many years the IOC stood its ground on this issue about discrimination in sports and insisted on taking the high road. And why not? It was merely upholding its own constitution.
The Olympic Charter is unequivocal in what it says about discrimination in sport. The section called Fundamental Principles of Olympism states the following: “The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practising sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.”
It also states this: “Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement.”
Well, Saudi Arabia clearly violates the Olympic Movement. So what was a country like Saudi Arabia doing in Beijing?
Of course, the issue of Saudi Arabia goes far beyond excluding women from its Olympic team. In Saudi Arabia, women are not allowed to vote, buy property or travel. They are not to be seen. The country is the very antithesis of a liberal democracy since no one is even allowed to practice any religion except Islam. It’s against the law.
While it may be naive for Western leaders to preach democracy and human rights to countries and cultures where such things are alien, there is no mistaking the Olympics credo. It’s written in stone. So where is the IOC on Saudi Arabia? What happened to all those noble principles that the organization embodied during almost three decades on the South Africa file? I’ll tell you what happened. Oil.
Saudi Arabia is home to one-quarter of the world’s known oil reserves. What’s more, while all that oil is flowing out of Saudi Arabia, a lot of American and Western money is flowing in.
Surely no one in their right mind would call China a leading purveyor of human rights, and it isn’t. While the country has certainly accomplished a great deal in recent years, what was the Tiananmen Square massacre all about? It has been expunged from the history books, not only in China where it never got into the history books, but even here in the West. It is forgotten.
Some voices in the Arab world are courageous enough to speak the truth about Saudi Arabia, although though they are few and far between. One of them is that of Saudi journalist and scholar Ali al-Ahmad who last May wrote these words about the Olympics in the International Herald Tribune: “Bar countries that bar women athletes.” Indeed.
Never mind dreaming that Saudi Arabian women will compete on the track. How about the diving board? Or, God forbid, beach volleyball? Hell, these women can’t even drive a car in their own country, which is a long way from parading around in a bikini.
In the U.S., especially since 9/11, it is said that security will always trump economics. I don’t know if security will always trump economics in the Olympics, but we may very well find out in 2012 when the next summer games are held in London. That will be a security program like the world has never seen before. But one thing is for damn sure. In the Olympics, economics will trump principle every time.
Jerry Amernic's Weblog 