In case you missed it, here is a link to Maria Alyokhina’s
Times op ed on Putin’s Olympics. It is far more powerful than anything I could
offer:
Friday, February 21, 2014
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Ukrainian Crisis: Some Information Sources
For those trying to follow developments in Ukraine, here are
a couple good sources:
http://www.rferl.org/contentlive/clashes-in-ukraine-live-blog-kyiv/25267783.html
Pussy Riot Attacked in Sochi
The brutal attack on Pussy Riot in Sochi can be read in three ways:
1)
The perpetrators acted on government orders;
2)
The government turned a blind eye to their
actions;
3)
The government played no role, but is incapable
of protecting its citizens.
I suspect the first explanation, but there is no version of
events that does not bespeak a profound failure by the Russian state.
As for Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and the
other members of Pussy Riot, they have again demonstrated their bravery through
principled defiance of the Putin regime. They continue to force the Putinists
to show their true colors.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Russian Environmental Activist Jailed
As the games go on, Russia continues to jail critics of
Putinism. Yesterday a judge in Krasnodar sent Yevgeny Vitishko to jail for
three years. Vitishko is a member of Environmental Watch on the North Caucasus
and a staunch critic of the environmental damage done by Olympic development in
Sochi.
His crime? Spray-painting a construction fence in protest.
Leading up to the Olympics there was some hope that, at
least until the Games end, political repression in Russia would slow. The
arrests of LGBT activists on opening day, and the severe sentence handed down
to Vitishko yesterday, suggest that maybe the opposite is true. While all eyes
are on the athletes, Russia is seizing the moment to crack down.
This is grim news, for as the athletes come home, what will
there be to restrain Putin?
Monday, February 10, 2014
It Never Rains ...
I’ve been scanning the major Russian news sites, looking to
see if Friday’s arrests of protestors garnered any attention. They are
uniformly silent.
Perhaps that’s not surprising, given Putin’s preemptive
strike against the last standing widely-available independent source of news in
Russia, the cable TV station Dozhd (“Rain”). Last week, Dozhd was pulled from
all cable providers in Russia, ostensibly because it ran an on-line poll that
was critical of the Soviet handling of the WWII blockade of Leningrad. As excuses
go, this is thin gruel. Clearly Putin did not want Russians to be distracted by
real news during the Olympic celebrations.
Yesterday in Moscow, the police arrested 41 people after
they staged a public protest of the closure of Dozhd. Most Russians will
probably never know.
Are Human Rights Political?
I agree 100% - the Olympics are political. I think that's generally true no matter who hosts them, but Putin has certainly put his own unique stamp upon them, celebrating Sochi’s
successful bid to host the Olympics as a symbol of Russia’s world power and (again
I fully agree with you) his grandiose notion of his own self-importance. Underlings in Putin’s government have no
qualms about chalking this one up as a political triumph for Russia:
In my view, protesters criticizing Russia’s LGBTQ standards are not being political – they are fighting for human rights that transcend national boundaries and that should exist in all realms, not just the political.
According to the Olympic Charter, new members take an oath in which they promise, among other things, to “keep myself free from any political or commercial influence and from any racial or religious consideration” and to “fight against all other forms of discrimination.” (See Section 16 of the Charter, subsection 1.3). The Charter also has seven “Fundamental Principles of Olympism;” the sixth (embraced by members of the P6 – Principle 6 – Movement) reads as follows: “6. 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.” (See “Fundamental Principles of Olympism”) If we can't point out that host nations are violating the basic precepts of the Olympics themselves without being "political," then how will these "fundamental" concepts ever be enforced?
“‘Its realization is already
a huge win for our country,’ Dmitri N. Kozak, a deputy prime minister and one
of Mr. Putin’s longest-standing aides, said in Sochi on Thursday. He went on to
use a phrase attributed to Catherine the
Great when she intervened to halt the court-martial of a general who
had stormed an Ottoman fortress without orders in the 18th century: ‘Victors
are not judged.’” (Steven Lee Myers)
But here’s what particularly gets under my skin. When Putin extols every new hotel (that is
not connected to the sewer, or that has bathroom doors that lock in the
athletes) as symbolic of Russia’s victory, the IOC remains silent. When Olympians, LGBTQ activists, or world
leaders criticize Russia’s anti-LGBTQ propaganda law, the IOC blasts them:
“IOC President Thomas Bach said that
the Sochi Winter Olympics ‘are a purely sporting event which should not be used
by uninvited guests to score political points,’ according to Karolos Grohmann
of REUTERS. In a clear reference to world leaders who publicly refused to
attend the first Winter Games in Russia, Bach said in an address in the host
Russian city that ‘some of them had not even been invited.’ He said, ‘In the
extreme we had to see a few politicians whose contribution to the fight for a
good cause consisted of publicly declining invitations they had not even
received.’” (Sports Business Daily)
In my view, protesters criticizing Russia’s LGBTQ standards are not being political – they are fighting for human rights that transcend national boundaries and that should exist in all realms, not just the political.
According to the Olympic Charter, new members take an oath in which they promise, among other things, to “keep myself free from any political or commercial influence and from any racial or religious consideration” and to “fight against all other forms of discrimination.” (See Section 16 of the Charter, subsection 1.3). The Charter also has seven “Fundamental Principles of Olympism;” the sixth (embraced by members of the P6 – Principle 6 – Movement) reads as follows: “6. 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.” (See “Fundamental Principles of Olympism”) If we can't point out that host nations are violating the basic precepts of the Olympics themselves without being "political," then how will these "fundamental" concepts ever be enforced?
When Putin celebrates Russia, he is spewing propaganda, and it is very
political in nature. The IOC says
nothing. Though I think that the campaign
of LGBTQ activists – it seems that in general, the athletes themselves have been silenced – fits into a category larger and more substantial than “political,”
let’s set that aside for a moment. Let’s
say that these activists’ are being
political. Why is their "propaganda"
squashed, while Putin is simply encouraged to pose for another shirtless photo
celebrating the triumph of Russia?
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Sochi: The Arrests Begin
It looks like Russia may have broken its first Olympic record already -- at least sixty-one human rights activists arrested on the first day. They include Anastasia Smirnova, one of Russia's bravest and most prominent gay rights activists; her crime was to unveil a banner that quoted Principle 6 of the Olympic Charter: "Discrimination is incompatible with the Olympic Movement."
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