Declaration of anti-authoritarian groups on the Ice Hockey World Championship held in
Belarus. ---- Minsk, the capital of Belarus, holds the Hockey World Championship from
Friday, May 9 to Sunday, May 25, 2014. As every act of top sports business, it carries
more or less bullying of the locals (in case of Belarus, it is, of course, rather more).
Moreover, this particular championship is a mockery to the subjects of the world power
elite that had long rhetorical objections against the Belarusian regime, but did not
prevent the Championship. ---- These are the two main reasons why we boycott the
Belarusian championship. ---- Firstly, we are principally against a police threats to
potential opponents of Lukashenko's hockey circus, which, as always, had the biggest
impact on our anarchist comrades. Belorussian Anarchist Black Cross has been gathering
information for weeks about police interventions against the anarchists, who must endure
interrogations at home and police stations, whose parents are urged to give phone numbers
of their children to the police, or they will be summoned for questioning...
The number of such bullied people has already exceeded one hundred. For example, the
anarchist Aleksander Franckevich was exemplary sentenced to 25 days of isolation under the
pretext of violation of paragraph of "bitching in public." Anastasia Kukhta was sentenced
to 17 days of isolation and Aleksander Orlov to 20 days, just a day before the start of
championship in Minsk. They were caught on the street by unknown people in civil clothes,
pushed into a car and taken away the day before the sentencing. There is no need to talk
about the fact that Minsk will now be swarming with hundreds of police officers in uniform
or civil clothes. It obviously has to be the promised reward to Belarusian fans, which was
mentioned by the Swiss boss of the International Ice Hockey Federation IIHF, when he
justified the pros of organizing the championship in Minsk.
Secondly, let us remind that since the year 2009, when IIHF agreed to organize world
championship 2014 in Belarus, corporate media have constantly reminded the fact that the
Western states and the U.S., as a moral authorities, have called for a boycott or
relocation of the championship, because to accept the Lukashenko regime in this way is
immoral. At least since the end of 2010 (when there were held mass protests during
Belarusian presidential elections) with growing numbers of specific evidences of
Lukashenko repression of any opposition, the western leaders were more often forced to
proclaim their outrage of human rights violations in "the last European totalitarian
state." They should supposedly draw consequences such as economic embargo, removal of
organization of the championship, etc. However, almost nothing happened in reality, and
the ridiculousness and absurdity of mass media phrases about the totalitarian state and
the last dictator in Europe, that mechanically surrounds the practical information about
the start and progress of Lukashenko's championship, is really blatant. Moreover,
talkative flexible advocates of the realpolitik, who are always closer to any profit than
attitude, are helping themselves by quoting Hockey Federation president Fasel, that "sport
cannot and should not be an instrument of politics," in argumentation, which is provided
by megaphones of corporate media as a basic replica to repeat during the insider pub debates.
So, sport is not an instrument of politics? Sure, it's more about tickets, sponsorship,
media revenue, merchandising, betting agencies... Professional sport is simply "just" a
means of advertising, tourist and other business; corruption at high and medium level of
business trafficking headed by concrete lobby; propagation of all-saving consumerism;
gaining favour of obedient and forlorn herd-audience.
In the words of George Orwell, it is "war without firing." The war for money, for power,
for dead and living souls that is wrapped into platitudes about fairness and rules. So it
is only a modest imitation of what is called the politics.
The championship, directed by Lukashenko with silent nodding of western political and
pseudo moral authorities, is also the sarcastic culmination of a hypocritical sports
series, which kicked off the Chinese Olympics and was followed by the one in Russia.
Similar sports gigantic events are legitimization of repressive regimes and particularly
big business, all at the expense of ordinary people and their rights.
Our idea of sport is different!
Czechoslovak Anarchist Federation (?SAF)
Anarchist Black Cross (ABC)
Voice of Anarcho-pacifism (VAP)
Anti-Fascist Action (AFA)
Asociace Alerta
Severo?esk? anarchistick? federace (SAF)
Website : http://www.csaf.cz/
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