The recent visit to the Olympic sites of the Paris 2024 Games by the president of the Iranian Paralympic Committee Ghafour Kargari, the former commander of the Revolutionary Guards in Iran (Al Quds), who bloodily repress all demonstrations against the political dictatorship religion of the mullahs and execute those who dare to defend violated fundamental freedoms (Radio France investigation unit, August 28, 2023), poses a major political and ethical problem, well beyond the “sports festival in the land of human rights ‘man’: like the World Athletics Championships in Hungary, which saw a parade of “a string of dictators” (The chained Duck, August 30, 2023), will the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, which claim to be “exemplary”, be the great gathering of official sporting representatives of the main dictatorships, autocracies and tyrannies on the planet? Will sports competitions, broadcast to the four corners of the world, give them the opportunity to participate in the masquerade of “Olympic peace” and “friendship between peoples”?
That a torturer as well known as Kargari, former leader of an organization considered terrorist in the United States, Great Britain and Canada, and sanctioned by the European Union since 2010, could so easily obtain a visa from the French administration and walking around freely in Seine-Saint-Denis is a disturbing sign of complicity or incompetence. This affair indeed testifies to the strategy of Olympic entryism used for a long time by numerous Islamic theocracies such as Iran, Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The Emir of Qatar Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani is one of the 99 active members of the International Olympic Committee. His brother Joaan Bin Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani is the president of the Qatar National Olympic Committee. A large part of the royal family has infiltrated national and international Olympic bodies, and controls the sponsorship or media broadcasting of sports competitions sold by the IOC. The Saudi Arabia of Mohammed ben Salman (MBS), which is currently leading a major sporting prestige offensive to veil its regular attacks on human rights – including through bloody methods – and which intends to host the Olympic Games with the same objective summer in 2036, maneuver within the Olympic multinational through Princess Reema Bandar Al-Saud, an active member of the IOC and the “women in sport (2018-2021)” and “gender equality, diversity and inclusion (2022)”. At the head of the Saudi National Olympic Committee, it is the Minister of Sports Abdulaziz bin Turki Al-Faisal, MBS’s right-hand man, who ensures continuity between the heart of power and Olympic affairs.
Olympic good standing visa
Olympic concealment or camouflage strategies are also part of the political-sporting arsenal of totalitarian regimes and authoritarian dictatorships such as China, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Turkey, Syria, Azerbaijan, Belarus or Russia. Looking through the organization chart of the members and commissions of the IOC – which dares to claim not to be involved in politics – we see that the bodyguards of all the despots have a visa of Olympic honorability. Ilham Aliyev, the bloodthirsty dictator of Azerbaijan, personally rules over his country’s entire sports nomenklatura as president of the National Olympic Committee. More subtle, Vladimir Putin, who was for a long time the “great friend” of the current German president of the IOC Thomas Bach, interferes in the mysteries of the empire of the rings through his most fervent sporting supporters: the former fencer Stanislav Pozdniakov (president of the National Olympic Committee), former pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva and ex-tennis player Shamil Tarpischev (both active members of the IOC).
Russian and Belarusian athletes totally subservient to mafia states, often military, police, spy agents and members of clubs controlled by the intelligence services (FSB, Russian GRU, Belarusian KGB) or the oligarchic mafias associated with the Kremlin, are the symbols alive from the will to power of Putin and Lukashenko. The Russian and Belarusian Olympic selections, whom the IOC wants to reconvert into “neutral athletes”, will not stop continuing in the stadiums the war that Putin started during the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Beijing by showing off their performances and their medals. France would then become the propaganda showcase of an imperialist state which openly violates international law, represents a serious threat to peace in Europe and has for a long time already been trampling on the illusory principles of the “Olympic charter”, both in matters of doping. than sporting fairness. All the dictatorships allied with Russia to crush Ukraine (Belarus, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Burma, North Korea) and those which openly declare themselves in ideological, religious or moral war against the West would not fail to also take advantage of this opportunity.
Among the 206 national Olympic committees which will send their delegation to France in July-August 2024, around sixty of them will be directly infiltrated by agents of the last dictatorships in the world, including the British press group. The Economist has recently established the list (Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Republic of Congo, Gabon, Burundi, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Burma, Brunei, etc. See “The world’s most, and least, democratic countries in 2022”, Economist.comFebruary 1, 2023).
In these countries, a large majority of athletes qualified for the Olympic Games come from detection, selection, preparation and improvement programs directly linked to the single power. The training centers in which they spend most of their time are veritable ideological barracks where they undergo intense nationalist indoctrination. Their loyalty to the power in place is constantly put to the test. To become a champion is to dedicate one’s life to the greatness of the nation and the power of its leader. Cloaked in its false “political neutrality”, the IOC may well use convoluted sophistry regarding athletes supposed not to represent their country, but the fact remains that in dictatorship or autocracy the athletes who compete in international competitions are state athletes on duty – ambassadors and gladiators who never miss an opportunity to wrap themselves in the national flag and publicly thank their charismatic leader.
For all these reasons, and because the public authorities constantly invoke respect for republican values, we call on human rights associations, political and trade union organizations and democratic movements concerned with defending fundamental freedoms and the law international community, to join this appeal and to publicly protest against the arrival in France of totally undesirable delegations.
Signatories : Dominique Baqué (philosopher and art critic), Marie-Jo Bonnet (historian, feminist), Miguel Benasayag (philosopher), Jean-Michel Besnier (emeritus professor of philosophy at Sorbonne-Université), Jean-Marie Brohm (sociologist, professor emeritus of universities), Pascal Bruckner (philosopher and writer), Gilles Bui-Xuan (professor emeritus in STAPS at the University of Artois), Anne-Lise Diet (psychoanalyst, institutional analyst), Renée Fregosi (philosopher and political scientist), Christian Godin (philosopher), Céline Masson (psychoanalyst, professor at the University of Picardie Jules Verne), Véronique Nahoum-Grappe (anthropologist), Nicolas Oblin (school teacher and lecturer at INSPE Nantes), Fabien Ollier, (director of the magazine Quel Sport?), Laetitia Petit (lecturer-HDR Aix-Marseille University), Dominique Pradelle (university professor, director of the Husserl Archives in Paris), Marie-Joëlle Redor, (former professor of law at the University of Caen Normandy), Carlos Alberto Ríos (historian, professor and researcher at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Azcapotzalco, Mexico), Christine Roquet (lecturer in dance at the University of Paris VIII), Louis Sala-Molins (emeritus professor of philosophy at the Universities of Paris I Sorbonne and Toulouse 2 Jean Jaurès), Xavier-Laurent Salvador (lecturer in medieval language and literature), Daniel Salvatore Schiffer (philosopher and writer), Jan Spurk (emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Paris V), Pierre-André Taguieff (philosopher and historian of ideas), Louise Vandelac (professor of sociology at the University of Quebec in Montreal), Patrick Vassort (lecturer-HDR in sociology at the UFRSTAPS of Caen).