Sponsors/IOC could've stopped Russia's laws

I supposed everything is easier in hindsight, but this is pretty fuckin bad even without hindsight. 

Apparently the Olympics are incredibly important to Putin, who wants them to go marvellously. Russian glory and all that I guess. The question is, would Putin have signed off on the anti-gay propaganda law had he'd realised that the sponsors and IOC (who'd both tracked the passage of the law) would pull out? The answer is likely no.

The law, passed in early June of this year and signed by Vladimir Putin on June 30, didn't just come out of nowhere. It worked its way up the legislative chain over a long period of time, beginning in the provinces, where similar local laws were passed as far back as 2006, and following on several years of crackdowns against LGBT activists and against pride parades in Moscow, St. Petersburg and elsewhere. 

Human Rights Watch (HRW) notes that before Sochi was chosen for the 2014 games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and other stakeholders, including American multinational sponsors of the Winter Olympics, as well as NBC Universal, which has the broadcast contract, carefully tracked the path of the legislation, which is a clear violation of the Olympic Charter. 

"This piece of legislation worked its way up through the legislative system," Minky Worden, HRW's Director of Global Initiatives, told me in an interview (listen to the full interview below). "The International Olympic Committee, the United States Olympic Committee, the so-called top corporate sponsors -- Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Procter & Gamble -- these companies all, as [HRW] did, tracked the progress of this law." 

"And because it is so clearly in complete violation of the Olympic Charter," she continued, "it's also clear to us at Human Rights Watch that if any of the major Olympic stakeholders who have a hotline to the Kremlin -- because the Olympics are very important to Putin personally, he has a deputy prime minister, [Dmitry] Kozak, who is tasked with making them come off perfectly -- that if any of the Olympic stakeholders, the sponsors who are literally paying for the Games, or the International Olympic Committee, the U.S. Olympic Committee or the other Olympic committees, if they weighed in on this, I don't think this law would have been signed by Putin or passed by the Duma. If they had leaned on [Russia] before the law was signed, it would not have been signed. That is absolutely true." 

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It's horrendous that the IOC, the USOC and the corporate sponsors allowed the law to get passed without applying pressure and sending the message that the Olympics won't happen in Russia unless the law was scuttled. Now, facing international outcry and boycotts, it's not enough to get assurances that athletes won't get arrested. We must demand that they put pressure on Putin's government to get the law repealed. more

I know sponsors are only interested in making money out of the thing (I think they can give up on the "looking good" part), but the fuckin IOC? Just limply acquiescing to the Hitler type human rights abuses, as long as the athletes and spectators are safe for two fuckin weeks?

I myself cringe at the thought of Australian athletes competing in Sochi. I don't care what any self absorbed athlete thinks about the games and their career. This is much bigger than that, this is about human lives being lost to persecution and thuggery while the state turns a blind eye. To those athletes, I'd say get a fuckin conscience man.  

Nothing less than a boycott or the moving of the games will suffice. We cannot and should not find ourselves absolving Russia of it's vile laws by turning up to their games. Russia has given us the finger over it, demanding that we don't interfere in their internal politics. They have obviously made up their mind. They don't deserve to have the games and should never have been considered in the first place.

As I've said for months, if Russia thinks it can go it alone with such horrendous human rights abuses then they need to realise that if they want to be part of the world community (and have the games) then they have to act like they're part of the world community. This "internal politics" bullshit is exactly how Hitler justified his persecution of the Jews.