Sportswashing – Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan is an oil rich semi-dictatorship under ‘President‘ Ilham Aliyev.

Capital Baku — which hosts many FIG competitions — can be accused of sportswashing, trying to improve their international reputations tarnished by wrongdoing.

In fact, the first usage of the term “sportswashing” may have been applied to Azerbaijan hosting the 2015 European Games in Baku.

September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a large-scale military offensive against Armenians in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh — internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but populated by Armenians.

Human rights organizations and experts in genocide prevention issued multiple alerts, stating that the region’s Armenian population was at risk or actively being subjected to ethnic cleansing and genocide.

I post this information here because the world seems to have mostly ignored the most recent attacks on Armenians. We should be aware of the situation every time we talk about the World Cup in Baku.

And every time we talk about Artur Davtyan, 2022 World Champion on vault.  From Armenia.