Statement of the Independent Media Council
If Russian and Belarusian athletes are allowed to compete at the 2024 Olympic Games, we call on the media not to cover the Olympic Games
On January 25, 2023, the International Olympic Committee announced that Russian and Belarusian athletes would be allowed to participate in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris after qualifying via Asian sports federations. The Committee tried to soften this cynical detour by ruling that Russians and Belarusians would have to compete under neutral flags and without using national symbols. However, as the President of Ukraine has said, "any neutral flag of Russian athletes is stained with blood."
On February 6, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine appealed to the IOC, national Olympic Committees, international sports federations, and parliaments of countries around the world to push for a ban on the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes in international sports competitions, including the 2024 Olympic Games, until the end of Russia's armed aggression against Ukraine.
As the Verkhovna Rada resolution states, the IOC's proposal to permit Russians and Belarusians to compete is "an insult to the memory of hundreds of thousands of citizens of Ukraine, including more than 220 Ukrainian athletes, who selflessly defended the Motherland and gave their lives in the struggle for its future as a democratic European state." The Baltic countries and Poland have already officially appealed to the IOC not to allow Russians and Belarusians to participate in the Olympics. The same position was expressed in a joint statement by representatives of the Olympic Committees of Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, and Denmark.
We hope that international pressure will force the IOC to reverse its decision. However, if Russian and Belarusian athletes are allowed to participate, we call on Ukrainian and foreign media to boycott the 2024 Olympic Games.
Russia's military aggression has already struck three hundred twenty sports facilities in Ukraine. Eighty-seven of them were completely or partially destroyed. Every day, the Russian military kills Ukrainian civilians, including professional athletes. Thus, on January 14, 2023, a master of sports in acrobatics, Anastasia Ignatenko, and a master of sports in boxing, trainer Mykhaylo Korenovskyi were killed by the Russian missile strike attack on Dnipro. As Russia wages its criminal aggression with its constant air strikes and the bombing of energy infrastructure, Ukrainian children are being robbed of the opportunity to train and compete in sporting activities.
Russia uses sporting competition as an ideological weapon in its hybrid aggression to spread propaganda and whitewash the crimes of the Russian military. Belarus, as an accomplice in the military aggression against Ukraine, is also responsible for crimes against humanity that have happened in Ukraine. Allowing the citizens of these countries to participate in the 2024 Olympic Games will be an act of appeasement of the aggressor and disrespect to the memory of thousands of innocent Ukrainians killed.
We call on journalists around the world to show solidarity by pushing the IOC to return to the fundamental principles of the Olympic movement "to support the establishment of a peaceful society that is interested in preserving human dignity."