On Friday the International Olympic Committee will decide whether Almaty in Kazakhstan or the Chinese capital Beijing will host the 2022 winter Olympics. Both countries are human-rights nightmares. No matter which city wins, the Olympic movement loses.
Originally the IOC had numerous suitors. But bids for the Games melted away. Voters in Munich, Stockholm, Krakow, and Graubunden, Switzerland, said thanks but no thanks to the Olympics, citing high costs, low public support and security demands. Lviv was forced to pull out due to unrest in Ukraine. Oslo was a clear frontrunner, but its bid was derailed when conservatives and progressives joined forces to say no.
This left a dubious duo: Almaty and Beijing. When Olympic members convene in Kuala Lumpur to submit their choice via secret ballot, they should seriously consider voting “none of the above”.
Were it not for the mass exodus of credible bidders, Almaty would not have a prayer. Kazakhstan is a new player in Olympic circles, a relative unknown and even the bid’s vice-chair Andrey Kryukov admitted: “There are a lot of former Soviet states – a lot of stans.”
But this is a stan with a plan. Unlike Uzbekistan, which unsuccessfully pursued the 2000 summer Games, the Almaty bid was crafted by wily veterans of the process. It offers a relatively compact bid: all venues sit within a 20-mile radius and government officials have promised a $75bn fund to shore up any fiscal risk.
Beijing, meanwhile, wants to become the first city to host both the summer and winter Olympics. The bid committee has emphasised its experience. The mayor Wang Anshun, who doubles as the president of Beijing 2022, emphasised that it has hosted more than 40 major international sports events in the past decade.
However, this month, Xiao Tian, the vice-president of Beijing 2022, was fired after accusations of corrupt practice. In a further blow, IOC members have expressed concern over the lack of natural snow. Almaty’s slogan, ‘Keeping it Real’, is a cheeky jab at Beijing’s snow quandary. Because of the doubts surrounding the Beijing bid, some experts have predicted the International Olympic Committee will give the Games to the new boy.
Beijing might lack snow, but the IOC has shown itself more than susceptible to the claim that holding events in authoritarian countries shines a light on the human-rights underbelly, accelerating progress towards a more democratic future. This is the exact line that Almaty’s bid team has adopted to try to sway the IOC.
Does hosting mega-events really help improve living conditions for citizens? Evidence from previous Olympics is scant. Indeed, Beijing itself gives lie to such claims. In 2001, when the IOC selected the city to host the 2008 summer Olympics, supporters promised a groundswell of political freedom.
One Beijing bid committee member stated: “We are confident that, with the Games coming to China, not only are they going to promote the economy, but also enhance all the social sectors, including education, medical care and human rights.” The IOC riffed on the motif, with the then-president Jacques Rogge saying: “It is clear that the staging of the Olympic Games will do a lot for the improvement of human rights and social relations in China.”
Such predictions were greatly exaggerated. In 2008 China ranked 167th on the Reporters Without Borders’press freedom index. In 2014 it dropped to 175th. Just before the 2008 Games ended, Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch (HRW) argued the Olympics set back the clock in China. “The reality is that the Chinese government’s hosting of the Games has been a catalyst for abuses.”
HRW added: “Over the past year Human Rights Watch has monitored and documented extensive human-rights violations directly linked to the preparation and the hosting of the Games. Human Rights Watch pointed out that, to the contrary, the Chinese government has consistently violated its Olympics-related human rights commitments.
“The International Olympic Committee has failed in its duty to ensure that the government fulfilled pledges. The Chinese government’s unrelenting campaign during the Games to squelch legal peaceful protests, limit media freedom and restrict the internet access of journalists reinforces the urgent need for the IOC to establish a permanent mechanism to monitor the human-rights performance and compliance of future Olympic host countries.”
The situation in Kazakhstan is not much better. Nursultan Nazarbayev has served as president since 1989, winning elections with Soviet-era margins. He may win elections with 98% of the vote, but he still has not convinced human-rights groups. HRW found the government deployed “overly broad laws” to crack down on political dissent. Freedom of religion and assembly are in danger while “torture remains common in places of detention”.
The constitutional council of Kazakhstan considered introducing copycat anti-LGBT legislation resembling the “propaganda of nontraditional sexual orientation” law that roused dissent in Russia before the 2014 Sochi Olympics, but it appears to have been abandoned for the moment.
The IOC likes to point to its “Olympic Agenda 2020”, a wide-ranging slate of reform recommendations unanimously passed in December 2014, as evidence that a new era of five-ring bliss is upon us.
But during the recent European Games held in the repressive state of Azerbaijan, the IOC did not make a peep, despite Olympic Agenda 2020 tenets vowing to “strengthen ethics” and “ensure compliance”. This conspicuous silence only stiffens the spines of critics who view the recommendations as more public-relations prattle than driver of authentic change. After all, one of the very first recommendations the IOC has pursued with any urgency is the creation of an Olympic TV Channel to broadcast its brand. This is hardly something for which the movement’s critics have clamoured.
If the IOC is serious about allying its high-minded Olympic Charter and on-the-ground practices, then it should call off the 2022 bidding contest. We are at an historic moment for the Games, and dire times call for courageous measures. The IOC could make an enormous statement that Olympic Agenda 2020 reforms are for real, not just PR gloss. It’s time for a time-out.
