Use of Euro 2012 as a political football against co-host Ukraine is a mistake

OPINION:Being unhappy with goings-on in Ukraine does not warrant a boycott

SOME EU leaders want a boycott of those games in Euro 2012 that are due to be held in Ukraine. They are wrong on this issue, because they are using sport for political reasons and also because a boycott would be futile.

In ancient Greece, city states at war with each other declared truces and laid down their arms in order to participate in the Olympic Games every four years. In those days, sport overcame politics. Today, the EU may be on the verge of doing the opposite.

The only logical justification for politicians boycotting sport is in order to keep politics out of sport. Boycotting apartheid South Africa was justified because that country imposed its bizarre politics on its sportsmen and women. It decided that no matter how talented an athlete was or how skilful a boxer might be, he or she could not represent the country if the government did not approve of their complexion.

There are some very good reasons for not being happy about what is going on in Ukraine these days. All of them are complicated, but none warrant a boycott.

The city of Lviv, formerly known as Lvov, Lwow and Lemberg (Ukraine is a complicated place) has, in its lack of wisdom, decided to unveil a statue to its local “hero” Stepan Bandera on the eve of the championship. The Poles, who are co-hosting Euro 2012, are not happy about this, since Bandera and his allies were responsible for killing tens of thousands of Poles during the second World War. Bandera also called for the extermination of Russian, Jewish and Polish intellectuals, but the brazen unveiling of his image does not warrant the withdrawal of Lviv as a host city.

I have my own reasons to be wary about attending Euro 2012, as, on my most recent visit to Kiev, my wallet (with a sum of money) was stolen in the short metro journey from Podol to Maidan Nezalezhnosti in the centre of the city. A colleague, a Canadian of Ukrainian origin, was robbed in her hotel, and another colleague, a sharp New Yorker, was robbed in the street. This does not warrant a boycott.

There are animal rights activists calling for a boycott too. They are up in arms because stray dogs have been rounded up in Kiev so supporters will be spared the sight of them roaming through the city centre. This does not justify a boycott either.

Many of Europe’s politicians, on the other hand, are intent on taking the easy road by using sport for political purposes – and here we come up against the immensely complicated politics of Ukraine, which resemble the shifting sands of the Sahara.

In 2005, in the Orange Revolution, Yulia Tymoshenko was portrayed as the brave Ukrainian woman who stood her ground against Viktor Yanukovich, a crooked Russian puppet. Now the roles have been reversed. Yanukovich is still the “bad guy”, but now he is the anti-Russian bad guy.

Tymoshenko is the “goodie”, but she is the pro-Russian “goodie” and her imprisonment is strongly criticised by the EU and by Russia. None of this, of course, has anything to do with Euro 2012, except that some western politicians want the EU to boycott football matches over events that have nothing to do with football.

So far, one politician, British foreign secretary William Hague, has announced he won’t attend. It is something of a sacrifice for a politician to dissociate himself from possible success on the part of his country’s sporting representatives.

Most politicians would like to be seen on TV cheering their country on. But maybe Hague is not all that confident of England’s chances of success. His absence and the absence of other EU leaders at games in Ukraine will have no impact on Yanukovich and his supporters. The games will go on without them.

Fortunately, EU states do not impose their political will on their sporting teams, otherwise Euro 2012 might see the withdrawal of footballers on the pitch rather than mere politicians in the grandstands.

But countries whose governments instruct their sports organisations on what to do exist. Watch out for withdrawals of teams and devalued gold medals at the Winter Olympics of 2014 at Sochi in the Russian Federation. We could be talking about real boycotts in this case.

Séamus Martin is a retired international editor and Moscow correspondent of The Irish Times