Flag flap symptom of what’s wrong with IOC

Those who are upset about the gay pride flag flying at Calgary’s city hall are missing the bigger picture.

You can’t fight city hall — and you shouldn’t in this instance. Instead, you should go straight to the top — the International Olympic Committee. They chose Russia as the venue for the 2014 Winter Games.

While Russia’s anti-gay legislation wasn’t passed until after Sochi had been chosen to host the games, if the IOC would refrain from giving the nod to countries whose human rights standards do not measure up to western specifications, these situations would not arise.

Human Rights Watch reports that on Friday, the first day of the Games, “prominent human rights activist Anastasia Smirnova was arrested in St. Petersburg. Her offence? She was on her way to take photos with a banner that promoted principle 6 of the Olympic Charter, which states that ‘Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender, or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic movement.’” If anyone deserves a gold medal during the Olympics, it’s Smirnova for standing up to Russian authorities.

Here’s what else Human Rights Watch has to say about Russia: “Mass protests following Russia’s December 2011 parliamentary elections prompted promises of political reforms. However, after his return to the presidency, Vladimir Putin oversaw the swift reversal of former president Dmitry Medvedev’s few, timid advances on political freedoms and unleashed an unprecedented crackdown against civic activism. New laws restrict non-governmental organizations, undermine freedoms of assembly and expression, and discourage international advocacy.

“New local laws discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Abuses continue in the counter-insurgency campaign in the North Caucasus.”

None of this should come as a surprise. Russia’s wars against Chechnya were going on long before Sochi was chosen as an Olympics venue.

Everyone has this ideal of the Olympics as an apolitical spectacle of pure athletic competition.

The Olympics is vested with mythical possibilities, as if the mere gathering of these athletes from all over the world has the power to change the way countries conduct themselves. Would that it were true. Or as Father Raymond J. De Souza put it in the National Post last week: “An earnest young athlete no one has ever heard of ‘medals’ in a sport no one knew existed and somehow a whole country feels better about itself.”

No matter how many medals Russian athletes pick up in Sochi, I doubt that Russia will be feeling better enough about itself to butt out of Ukraine’s business. The New York Times Monday cynically noted that the deadline for settling the little dust-up is when “Vladimir V. Putin ... will no longer have to play the congenial Olympic host and can turn his attention to scoring a Russian ‘win’ in Ukraine.”

The Summer 2016 Olympics will be held in Brazil, which is having some human rights troubles of its own. Human Rights Watch notes the death in 2012 of activist Diego Luiz Berbare Bandeira, shot to death in Sao Paulo because he dared expose police corruption. Human Rights Watch also reports that “torture is a chronic problem throughout Brazil’s detention centres and police stations.”

The next Winter Olympics will be held in 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and the 2020 summer games will be in Tokyo, both good choices.

Moral of the story? Stop letting countries with dodgy records of democracy host the Olympics. Don’t blame Calgary city hall for showing support for gay rights. Blame the IOC for choosing Russia in the first place.