“Sir,
On March 19, 2024, you granted a newspaper interview The world. To the question “Could the next IOC president come from a non-democratic country?”, you answered: “You would first have to give me the definition of a non-democratic country.” You then concluded this interview by specifying that the IOC president must “be ready to uphold the values of Olympism” but “respect the fact that, in certain cultures, there may be different ways of upholding these values.”
Does this relativism apply to the Islamic “Republic” of Iran, which is one of the countries selected by the IOC to participate in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games?
On March 8, 2024, the Independent International Mission (IFF), established in November 2022 by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate the deteriorating human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran, submitted its first report. It leaves no room for ambiguity: extrajudicial executions, disproportionate lethal force, torture, rape, arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances are among the many rights violations that constitute, in the mission’s own words, “crimes against humanity”. In a new report published on April 4, 2024, the NGO Amnesty International states that the Iranian state “persists in its murderous madness, transforming its prisons into veritable places of massacre”.
The Islamic Republic is not a democratic state
No, Mr. Bach, the Islamic Republic is not a democratic state. This regime is flouting the most basic human rights before our eyes, and a fortiori, the Olympic charter. The murder by state agents of a woman who refuses to cover her hair has nothing to do with culture. The sexual apartheid that 40 million Iranian women have suffered for 45 years has nothing to do with culture. The public hanging of peaceful protesters has nothing to do with culture. The amputation for theft or the deliberate blinding of harmless protesters has nothing to do with culture. The death sentence of political prisoners, such as Toomaj Salehi, an artist and human rights defender, has nothing to do with culture. These are all barbaric practices aimed at terrorizing the population and stifling any form of protest in order to maintain power. Freedom, for women and men, is not a relative value; every human being aspires to it. To claim otherwise is at best ignorance or nauseating orientalism, at worst intellectual dishonesty.
The Islamic Republic is a totalitarian state that commits crimes against humanity against its own population on a daily basis. The IOC may retort that it cannot be more demanding than the United Nations, which has never initiated proceedings criminalizing this regime. However, it has, in its Olympic charter, tools that allow it to refuse the dictates of a regime that imposes sexual apartheid through the obligation for female athletes to wear the veil and the banning of certain sports disciplines. So many dictates contrary to the principle of non-discrimination and to rule 50.2 prohibiting any political, religious or racial demonstration in an Olympic place, site or location.
Instead, the IOC allows the Islamic Republic to engage in, in front of spectators around the world, the open proselytism of a sporting model that discriminates against more than half of humanity, thus betraying the Olympic Charter. Institutionalized sexual apartheid also impacts sport, just as did the racial apartheid imposed by the Union of South Africa, excluded for 30 years from the Olympic Games. Under the Olympic Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the mullahs’ regime has no place at the Olympic Games. Its place is before international criminal justice.”
First signatories:
Mitra Hejazipour – International Women’s Chess Grandmaster; Mahyar Monshipour – World Boxing Champion; Marzieh Hamidi – Afghan Taekwondo Champion; Annie Sugier – President of the International Women’s Rights League; Arlette Zilberg – Feminist Activist; Hilda Dehghani-Schmit – International Secularism Prize 2024; Hirbod Dehghani-Azar – Lawyer at the Paris Bar, International Secularism Prize 2024; Lilas Pakzad – Art Historian; Catherine Louveau – Sociologist, Professor Emeritus of Universities; Chantal Crabere – PE Teacher; Michèle Vianès – Women’s Perspectives; Jean-Marie Brohm – Sociologist, Professor Emeritus of Universities; Patricia Costantini – Retired Ministry of Sports Executive; Céline Masson – University Professor, Psychoanalyst; Martine Benoit – University professor; François Rastier – Research director; Annette Guillaumin – Retired teacher; André Tiran – Professor of science emeritus; Renée Fregosi – Philosopher and political scientist; Stéphane Héas – Sociologist, university professor; Nicole Raffin – Secular activist, feminist, universalist; Fabien Ollier – Director of the journal “Quel Sport”.
Collectives and Associations:
This Is A Revolution; Norouz; Azadi Woman; Collective Against Terrorism; Movement for Peace and Against Terrorism (MPCT); The Citadels; European Iranian Woman for Secular Democracy; Libres Mariannes; The League of International Women’s Rights (LDIF); Mediterranean Women Journalists Forum; Universalist and Secular Feminist Network; Band Of Sisters; Association EGALE Equality Secularism Europe.