Hain urges boycott of Moscow Olympics

Press, 22 August 1978, Page 16

Hain urges boycott of Moscow Olympics

PETER HAIN is a leading British campaigner against apartheid and in favour of civil rights. Last year he left the Liberal Party in Britain and joined the Labour Party. In this article, reprinted from the “Daily Telegraph,” London, he urges Britain and other countries to boycott the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980.

For me, the debate over demands to withdraw the 1980 Olympics from Moscow has been a nostalgic one. “Keep politics out of sport,” “Don’t meddle in the internal affairs of a foreign country” (uttered by such unlikely b;d":llows as Enoch Powell and Leonid Brezhnev, among others). It takes me back to the Stop the Seventy Tour campaign in Britain against apartheid cricket. And, just as these views condoned racialist sport in South Africa then, so they condone tyranny in Russia today. Not that the two issues are strictly comparable: South Africa’s racialist sport is a direct reflection of its racialist apartheid system whereas Russia’s sporting system is relatively open and is free from any legalised discrimination. No other country allows its politics to. dominate its sport like South Africa: only under apartheid is there a formal and automatic barrier against sportsmen on acial grounds. To oppose international snorts participation by white South Africa is therefore a matter of principle; with other tyrannies it is a question of tactics: will such opposition help advance the cause of human rights, or not?

This, then, is the 64-dollar question, a question that requires each case to be carefully assessed on its merits.

For to do otherwise, to protest on every sporting occasion, against every co mtry in which human rights are under attack, would bring international sport to an end. Over the 1980 Olympics, however, there ought to be no equivocation. Through the übiquitous repression and harassment of its critics, culminating in the farcical trials Shcharansky and Ginsburg, the Soviet Union has clearly forfeited its right to stage the world’s Number One spectacle. And let' there be no doubt that the modem Olympics are just that. In the television age they are. perhaps, the central event of the world calendar, engaging the interest of hundreds of millions of people, bringing enormous prestige to the host country and, ■in the case of oppressive regimes, a certain vicarious respectability — which is precisely why the normally hard-faced Kremlin is so vulnerable to having the Olympics used as a lever against its abhorrent practices. We should not flinch from exercising such leverage. Russian repression of internal dissent is escalating. It is not onlv being directed at figures such as Solzhenitsyn and Bukovsky, but also at Russian 'socialists and trade unionists.

Earlier this year, the -ewly-formed Association of

Free Trade Unions of Workers in the Soviet Union (A.F.T.U.W.S.U.) issued a document detailing their plight and calling for international solidarity action. Their appeal described how they had "all been dismissed from employment for exposing abuses or for speaking out against management.” They explained that they had been deprived of work for periods of one to five years and had been intimidated and placed in psychiatric hospitals. Their spokesman, Vladimir Klebanov, was a foreman in the Bazhanov mine in the Ukraine until he was arrested and sent for “psychiatric treatment” in 1965. His “crime” was refusing to send workers into mines where safety regulations were being ignored and refusing to do compulsory overtime. Although Klebanov was re- ■ leased after four years, he was arrested again in February and prevented from publicising the work of the A.F.T.U.W.S.U.

Such flagrant, repression of socialists and trade unionists in what purports to be a Socialist workers’ state, gives the lie to the claim of both Soviet authorities and apologists that all dissidents are “reactionaries.”

The argument that a boycott of the Moscow Olympics could antagonise the Soviet authorities sufficiently to jeopardise detente and trade relations, is specious. What sort of detente is it that can only be maintained at the expense of the rights of Soviet citizens and workers? A detente for the benefit of the ruling elites of the super powers, or for ordinary people? There really is no excuse for such appeasement. We

have after all a lesson of recent history: of the 1936 Berlin Olympics which Hitler exploited to the full, wining and dining the world’s press while the first bricks were already being laid for the gas chambers. , More recently, the record has shown that world pressure can have a significant impact upon a country’s policies, as witness its effect on apartheid in South Africa. This has been most notable in sport, where the boycott campaigns of the late 1960 s and 1970 s have forced changes which — while still half-hearted — were unthinkable only 10 years ago.

Most tyrannies are acutely conscious of their world reputation and the Soviets are no exception; the greater the pressure on Russia the less scope she will have for untrammelled repression of dissidents.

The suggestion that flooding Moscow with foreign visitors will magically soften the evil practices of the K.G.B. is laughable. If anything, dissidents will be even more closely policed in order to enforce rigid social control.

No doubt a benign and friendly face will be presented to tourists, but that will be a sham, and the Olympics are likely to strengthen the Brezhnev regime’s internal legitimacy and world status. This certainly has been the experience in Argentina and Chile. The political prisons in Argentina were not emptied as a result of the World Cup — indeed, the success of the event strengthened the Junta’s hold on the country and it gained international acclaim. Likewise, Chilean repression continues unabated, despite

Scotland having played football in tlie stadium the Chilean Junta once used as a concentration camp. How different it might have been if we had learnt from the South African experience and threatened boycotts. As f.or the hackneyed cry of “keep politics out of sport,” this, in the politically charged atmosphere of modem sport, is tantamount to saying “keep life out of sport.” It is as disingenuous as it is insensitive to those human rights which sport can often advance.

What, then, should be done?

First, Britain can propose at the United Nations that, if the Soviet Union persists in violating the U.N. Charter of Human Rights, then the International Olympic Committee should be requested to find an alternative venue (possibly Canada). A deadline of December 31, 1978, should be set by which time either all dissidents must be released and no further trumped-up political trials take place, or Moscow would lose the Olympics. Second, pressure must be put on the 1.0. C. to insist that a pre-condition for hosting the Olympics in the future will be the full implementation of the U.N. Rights Charter.

Should such concerted international action prove impossible, then Britain should take the lead, boycott the Olympics and attempt to persuade others to do the same.

Finally, if these official initiatives are not taken, there is still the option of d ; rect protest in Moscow. Campaigners supporting those being persecuted could organise special contingents

to watcn the Games and then stage freedom demonstrations in Moscow. And the international trade union movement could threaten to “black” all transport and communications for the Olympics unless the demand to stop the repression is conceded.

However, we should not be too surprised if such British appeals for action are greeted with some Cynicism internationally. Our consistent prevarication over issues such as apartheid and our failure to take a stand against tyrannies in places such as Chile has left a credibility gap which cou'd obstruct effective use being made of the golden opportunity presented by the 1980 Olympics. What we require above all is a consistently militant attitude toward the defence of human rights — wherever they are being infringed and whatever the ideological complexion of the regime responsible. At present the Moscow Olympics look to be going to serve as an elaborate sideshow, distracting attention from the reality of Russian police-state oppression. They could however become a watershed in the fight for individual freedom, both in Russia and elsewhere. It may be doubted that sport can play such a major liberating role. But the particular circumstances of Moscow 1980 make that eminently possible — if we decide to make a smalt sacrifice ourselves and translate all that fine rhetoric and passionate concern over the infamous Soviets into concrete action.