Webinar - Camouflaging Injustice: Using Sport to Hide Oppression
Join a panel of experts to learn more about sportswashing, the role of dirty sponsorship money, and how we can work to amplify the voices of those resisting repression and struggling for justice for all.
Sportswashing.
It’s a deliberate strategy employed by human rights abusing states, supported by dirty corporate sponsorship money, to use sports in an attempt to obscure their repression and launder their public image.
Apartheid Israel uses sporting events to obscure its decades-old regime of settler-colonialism, military occupation, and apartheid oppressing millions of Indigenous Palestinians.
Military fighter jet “flyovers” have become the norm at US football matches.
Massive sporting events like the Olympics have been used to squash dissent, and accelerate processes of gentrification.
Next month, the FIFA World Cup kicks off in Qatar, where the infrastructure that the tournament will rely on has been built on the back of hyper-exploited migrant labour. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates host extravagant sports tournaments and games to whitewash their war crimes in Yemen and mass repression at home.
Let’s pull back the curtain.
Join us for an online discussion, co-hosted with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (UK), on October 18, 8pm Palestine time (see the time in your area).
Register for Camouflaging Injustice: Using Sport to Hide Oppression
Corporations lend legitimacy to sportswashing events and sporting bodies through sponsorship, regardless of human rights violations.
While some corporations are distancing themselves from the World Cup in Qatar, the Carrefour supermarket chain has doubled down on its sponsorship.
German brand Puma sponsors the Israel Football Association, which advocates for, and governs on behalf of clubs in illegal Israeli settlements on stolen Palestinian land.
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Join our stellar panel to learn more about sportswashing, the role of dirty sponsorship money, and how we can work to amplify the voices of those resisting repression and struggling for justice for all.
Speakers:
Shireen Ahmed (Chair) is a multi-platform sports journalist, a TEDx speaker, mentor, and an award-winning sports activist who focuses on the intersections of racism and misogyny in sports.
Abdullah Al-Arian is a professor of modern Middle East history. He is the editor of the recently published Football in the Middle East: State, Society, and the Beautiful Game (Hurst/Oxford University Press). He is also editor of the Critical Currents in Islam page on the Jadaliyya e-zine.
Jules Boykoff is the author of five books on the Olympics, including Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics. He teaches politics and writing at Pacific University in Oregon, USA. On Twitter: @JulesBoykoff.
Aya Khattab is a Palestinian footballer who plays for the Palestine women’s national team.
Nicholas McGeehan is a founding director of FairSquare Research and Projects. He is an investigator and leading advocate on migrant workers’ rights. He was a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch for five years, where he conducted research and advocacy on a wide range of rights issues, including work on abuses in agricultural supply chains and heat-related deaths in the construction sector.
