International sports associations caught between $ signs and human rights ideals

A just-published study highlights how commerce and glitz are reinforcing support for autocracy by international sports associations and undermining the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) newly-found resolve to hold potential host cities to human rights standards to which world football body FIFA pays lip service.

The study by Andrew Zimbalist, titled "Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup," was published as the Azerbaijani capital of Baku is gearing up to host in June the first Europe Games. Digital clocks counting down to the tournament festoon the city that has built a 65,000 seat football stadium and a state-of-the-art gymnastics arena for the more than 6,000 athletes expected to compete.

Like with the earlier European Song Festival in 2012 as well as a forthcoming Formula One Race, the hosting of 2020 Euro matches and European football body UEFA's Under-17 championship, the European Games allow a corrupt, dictatorial regime in which the intractable link between sports and politics is symbolized by the fact that President Ilham Alyev doubles up as head of his country's National Olympic Committee to positively project itself on the international stage. Those tournaments are likely to build up to an Azeri bid for the Olympic Games.

Rather than acting as a catalyst for change, the song festival and the forthcoming European Games have focused attention on the country's crackdown on dissent and freedom of expression, which has led to the targeting of scores of activists and journalists, prominent among whom is journalist Khadija Ismayilova, who has persistently reported on corruption and abuses of human rights in Azerbaijan.

"We are a kind of a loser nation. We failed in a lot of...