Saudi Arabia won’t allow its female athletes to compete in the Olympics. The International Olympic Committe has a policy not to allow participatory countries to discriminate.
So why hasn’t the IOC banned Saudi Arabia?
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Thursday faced calls to ban Saudi Arabia from London 2012 after the country’s Olympic chief ruled out sending women athletes to the Games.
The Saudi Olympic Committee president Prince Nawaf bin Faisal said he was “not endorsing” female participation in London as part of the official delegation.
Sue Tibballs, chief executive of the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation (WSFF), said that was unacceptable. Tibballs said: “Saudi Arabia’s current refusal to send sportswomen to the Olympics puts them directly at odds with one of the IOC’s fundamental principles as laid out within the Olympic Charter.
“It reads that ‘any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, sex or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement’.
“If today’s reports are to be believed, we would expect the IOC to defend the Olympic Charter and exclude Saudi Arabia from IOC membership and the London 2012 Olympic Games.”
The IOC excluded Afghanistan from the Sydney 2000 Olympics due to its discrimination of women under the Taliban regime. “The IOC needs to send a clear message to Saudi Arabia that they will not tolerate continued gender discrimination,” Tibballs added.
In 1964, South Africa was banned from participating in the summer Olympics in Tokyo because of the country’s racist Apartheid government. That ban lasted until 1992, when South Africa’s white-only government passed a referendum that approved the reform process.
I just blogged about how women’s rights around the world are still considered a ‘cultural’ issue and not a political one.
Women, like all human beings, are entitled to full human rights
A major reason that South Africa ever changed its racist government was because the country was condemned by the global community. Gender Apartheid cannot be tolerated and ignored by the rest of the world or it will never stop.
The Women Sports and Fitness Foundation has a petition on Change.org. As of this posting, it only has 32 signatures. Please add your name to the petition now.
I have long held tthat “oppression is oppression is oppression”, no matter what the “cultural norms” are. I am with you in that the Olympic Committee should ban Saudia Arabia due to their exclusion of women on their olympic team. I grew up as a very devout Catholic – thankfully in the social justice mode. When I told my Mom I wanted to be a priest, she said that she would “back me to the Vatican” (this was in the early 70’s). When JP II became pope, I asked Mom how she felt about him banning women priests. She said his attitude was a part of his culture. I asked how she would feel if the pope banned black folks from being priests, and she said that was a different matter. Oppression against women is not considered oppression so it’s OK. Quite a few years ago,a white woman and a black man were running for the Democratic nomination in Florida. The black man said about his rival, “That bitch is racist”. That comment hit me in the gut. If she had said, “That nigger is a sexist”, folks would have been up in arms.
Am giving MM kudos for this story. Hopefully all of us are on board with MM. to call for a ban of Saudi Arabia for doing this and we get our voices heard. Let the pressure mount on the Olympic Committee until they do the right thing. Plenty of ads support the Olympics, Let the companies who do these ads hear from us. Boycott/