A year bookended by the
Beijing Winter Olympics and the
FIFA World Cup in Qatar could be a high point of authoritarian regimes looking to cover up their dismal
Human Rights records
The year 2022 – which launches into the Olympic Games in Beijing and ends with the World Cup in Qatar – is set to be a great year for authoritarian regimes looking to cover up their atrocious human rights records.
Over the course of a 12-month period, countries such as
China, Qatar and
Saudi Arabia, all of whom have been criticized for human rights violations, will use prestigious sports events to polish their public image on an international stage. This process is known as sportswashing, a term popularized by Amnesty International in 2018 to describe the use of sports by oppressive governments to legitimize their regimes and distract from their human rights abuses. Traditional examples of sportswashing include the 1936 Olympic Games in
Berlin under the Nazi regime, which Hitler hosted in an attempt to showcase German and Aryan superiority.