The IOC has undermined itself with speak of particular person accountability on the Paris 2024 Games, Russia has claimed
The International Olympic Committee’s place that Israeli athletes aren’t answerable for the actions of their authorities is “outrageous” given the IOC’s blanket ban on Russia on these very grounds, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov mentioned on Thursday.
“The IOC has discredited itself entirely,” Lavrov instructed reporters, accusing the physique of “demonstrating its political activism time and again.”
“Whatever fits the interests of the West, mainly the US, they support and look for formulas to make it work,” the Russian overseas minister added.
According to Russian Sports Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko, the IOC “changed shoes in mid-air” with the intention to accommodate Israel and the battle endorsed by the US.
On Wednesday, the German company DPA revealed an announcement by an IOC spokesperson warning the contributors of the upcoming Paris Olympics to not have interaction in any “discriminatory behavior” towards Israeli athletes.
“The IOC is committed to the concept of individual responsibility and athletes cannot be held responsible for the actions of their governments,” the spokesman mentioned, including that if something like that occurs, the IOC will “ensure that swift action is taken, as during the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020.”
During the Tokyo Games, Algerian judoka Fethi Nourine withdrew from the competitors to keep away from a doable match with Israel’s Tohar Butbul. Nourine and his coach had been each punished by the IOC with a 10-year ban.
Meanwhile, the IOC’s place on Ukrainians refusing to face athletes from Russia and Belarus – already pressured to compete below impartial flags – is to “encourage … the necessary degree of sensitivity.”
There was no point out of “individual responsibility” final month, when the IOC suspended the Russian Olympic Committee, claiming its resolution to incorporate athletes from Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye – 4 areas that voted to hitch Russia final yr – “constitutes a breach of the Olympic Charter because it violates the territorial integrity” of Ukraine.
The IOC additionally claimed that its “values-based course of action” has been endorsed by the “vast majority of the international community,” pointing to the place of the US and its G7 allies. The IOC additionally interpreted the assertion by the Non-Aligned Movement – that athletes from all 206 nationwide committees ought to take part on the Paris Olympics – as a blanket endorsement of its ban on Russia and Belarus.
In September, IOC President Thomas Bach mentioned that Russian and Belarusian athletes may very well be allowed to compete in Paris – below a impartial flag – in the event that they “do not support the war and are not linked to the military, or to other services” of their international locations.
According to Chernyshenko, Russia has all the time advocated for equality of athletes and its place – not like that of the IOC – stays unchanged. Meanwhile, Lavrov instructed reporters that Moscow will observe by on President Vladimir Putin’s initiative to prepare a sequence of sporting occasions that may really be worldwide, common, and respectful of the ideas within the Olympic Charter, “which the IOC has grossly violated.”
(RT.com)