Today (June 14), as we write this editorial on our deadline day, the 2018 FIFA World Cup gets under way in Russia with 31 teams competing. It’s an international championship that never should have been awarded to the Russian Federation to host. Unfortunately, calls for boycotting the World Cup have largely been ignored, although some countries did announce a diplomatic boycott. (According to Euromaidan Press, those countries are: Australia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Japan, Poland, Sweden, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.)
Also in Russia, in the far-northern Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region, Ukrainian political prisoner Oleh Sentsov is now on the 32nd day of his hunger strike to demand the release of all Ukrainian political prisoners held by Russia. Mr. Sentsov is serving a 20-year sentence on fabricated charges of terrorism because of his support for the Euro-Maidan and his opposition to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. He has pledged that he will continue his hunger strike, which he timed to coincide with the World Cup, “to the end.”
As Halya Coynash wrote on Facebook: “There are countless reasons why the 2018 World Cup should not provide its host country, Russia, with an image success, but one – the need to save Oleh Sentsov’s life – is urgent. We can all help make it hurt Russia if the Kremlin doesn’t release Sentsov, and 70 other Ukrainian political prisoners held in Russia and occupied Crimea.”
Here in the United States, Reps. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) on June 6 introduced a resolution “condemning Russian transgressions against international law and FIFA values during the 2018 World Cup in Russia.” Their bipartisan congressional resolution cites Russia’s “deeply troubling human rights record”; its moves “to dominate its neighbors, such as Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova” and to “undermine the rules-based international order through military action”; its “aggression and the continued illegal occupation of regions of Ukraine [that] has caused more than 10,000 deaths, displaced 1.6 million Ukrainians, and marginalized the native Tatar population of Crimea”; and more. The resolution calls on FIFA to, among other things, “condemn Russia’s transgressions against international law and FIFA values” and “provide a public, detailed explanation of why FIFA continues to plan to hold the World Cup in Russia given its continued status as an internationally sanctioned country due to its ongoing aggression against Ukraine, including its illegal occupation of Crimea.”
In Brussels, on the day of the World Cup’s opening, the European Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling on Russia to “immediately and unconditionally” release Mr. Sentsov and all other “illegally detained Ukrainian citizens.” Some political groups in the legislative body had wanted to include a call for a European Union diplomatic boycott of the tournament, but “compromise” wording was adopted. Instead, the resolution “calls on the EU to make a statement to condemn human rights violations in Russia and the attempt to hide them under the cover of the FIFA World Cup.” Too little, too late…
Meanwhile, the World Cup will go on and Russia will revel in the experience, political prisoners will continue to suffer and more people will die as a result of Russia’s aggression. How incongruous.