(Bloomberg) -- More than half of the Russian and Belarusian athletes cleared to compete at the Paris Olympics have links to military agencies or showed support for the war in Ukraine, according to a human rights group which is urging sponsors of the Games to intervene.
A total of 33 out of 59 athletes were in violation of the International Olympic Committee’s guidelines on participation at the Games, a 223-page report from The Hague-based Global Rights Compliance concluded.
Wayne Jordash, the body’s president and a human-rights lawyer who’s also part of an advisory group set up to aid Ukrainian law enforcement investigate war crimes, said the IOC in June acknowledged his letter expressing concerns but wouldn’t discuss the matter in substantive terms and has ignored two further letters.
The IOC “is effectively sportswashing its position” by failing properly to apply rules it set to govern which Russian or Belarusian athletes could compete in Paris, he said. “If they hadn’t come out with these principles and promoted them, then the IOC’s position would be less egregious,” Jordash said.
The IOC said in a statement it “cannot comment on individual cases and the decisions of the Individual Neutral Athlete Eligibility Review Panel.” Participants were reviewed in line with the committee’s guiding principles on selection of Russian and Belarusian athletes in Paris, the IOC said.
The Russian Ministry of Sport didn’t respond to a request to comment.
Global Rights Compliance is sending its report to all 15 headline sponsors of the Olympics that open on July 26, urging them to take a position, put pressure on the IOC or reconsider their sponsorship of the Games, said Jordash.
“If you’re a sponsor you’re linked” to the IOC’s activities, “and international law and the UN’s guiding principles on business and human rights says you have to exert leverage” to improve the situation, he said.
Army Clubs
The report cited 12 competitors as having links to the military and security forces through bodies such as the Central Sports Club of the Army, or CSKA, an institution subordinate to the Russian Defense Ministry. Thirteen were identified as having ‘liked’ or retweeted pro-war or anti-Ukrainian posts on social media.
Last week, the IOC listed 59 Russian and Belarusian athletes who were invited to compete in Paris as neutrals and stated that 28 had declined the offer. It said the review panel reached decisions with help of new information, “in particular official lists of athletes affiliated with sports clubs of the military and the security forces published on official websites in Russia and Belarus.”
After Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the IOC condemned the aggression and banned Russia and Belarus from hosting international sports events or sending teams to represent the countries at them. It also barred their national flags, anthems or sports colors from events and refused to accredit government officials.
The committee set conditions for individual athletes from Russia and Belarus to compete as “neutral” participants, provided they were not involved in “actively supporting the war in Ukraine.” It specified in December last year in relation to the Paris Olympics that athletes were ineligible if they were “contracted to the Russian or Belarusian military or national security agencies.”
The IOC said 330 Russians and 104 Belarusians competed at the 2021 Tokyo Games.
In October, the IOC suspended the Russian Olympic Committee for including sports organizations from regions of Ukraine occupied by Putin’s forces in its membership.
(Updates with comment from the IOC in fifth paragraph)
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