The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe held a hearing, on Tuesday 25 April in Strasbourg, on the question of whether Russian and Belarusian athletes should participate in the Summer Olympics, which will be held in Paris in the summer of 2024.
It was part of the preparation of a report on “Sport as a vehicle for integrity and values”, which was entrusted to the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and the Media.
Contacted by video conference, Andriy Chesnokov, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Youth and Sports, was clear: “If Russian or Belarusian athletes participate in the 2024 Paris Olympics, my government will not support Ukrainian athletes attending the event”.
The question remains unresolved, as Tiny Kox, President of the Assembly, reminded us, since after announcing the exclusion of these athletes at the end of February 2022, a few days after the armed invasion of Ukraine by Russia supported by Belarus, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) “is in the process of changing its position and seems to be favouring the participation of athletes from these two countries”.
A reversal based on the views of two special rapporteurs of the UN Human Rights Council.
“In September 2022, we wrote to the IOC to express our concern”, said the UN rapporteur, Alexandra Xanthaki. “The prohibition of participation on the basis of nationality alone seems to us to run counter to the principles of universality and non-discrimination. It confuses the behaviour of states with that of individuals”.
This brings in the notion of a “strict neutrality” regime, as it could apply to Russian and Belarusian athletes at the 2024 Olympics.
We can envisage a neutral banner, refuse the anthems, give no accreditation to the officials of these two countries, said Amélie Oudea-Castera, French Minister for Sport and the Olympics and Paralympic Games. But what about team sports where athletes are grouped in pairs (badminton, rowing) or teams? What about athletes directly or indirectly financed by the Russian or Belarusian state? How to select sportsmen and women who are strictly independent of the government when we know how intrinsically linked they are to it?
“The IOC is working on it”, said Francesco Ricci Bitti, President of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF).
“There are differences, but I am convinced that it will work”.
For the Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Sport, referring to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, “the right to non-discrimination is not an absolute right (and) a difference in treatment can be justified by a legitimate objective of peace or public order”. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)