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A Volunteer’s View of the Rio Olympics

Céline Sonnenberg — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 13:58:14 +0000

The 2016 Olympics have had a bad reputation from the start. Seemingly “doomed to fail”, reports about the first ever Olympic Games held in South America included the obvious safety concerns in a city like Rio de Janeiro with high criminality, drug problems and the almost law free zones in some favelas, as well as the horrific water conditions in the lagoon, the influence on the public, continuous corruption problems and obviously Zika.

I myself, as someone who applied to be a volunteer in the Games in 2014, had my own concerns, but I also questioned if my decision to work for free in this event would be supporting the wrong message and groups with my workforce while knowing that the money spent on the Olympic Games as well as the World Championship in Football could have been used for much more important issues such as the health care and education system in Brazil. But I had fallen in love with Rio and its people during my first visit and I was too eager to return.

And now – a little more than two months later – I am so thankful that I did go and so happy that I got to connect with so many amazing people from all over the globe.

Even before I actually started working I could see just how many foreigners were pouring into Rio, excited to see their favourite sports and happy to get to know a new country. I was extremely lucky to be able to participate in a sport I actually majorly enjoyed: horse riding. It was so easy to share the fascination of horse-riding even with Brazilian colleagues, who did not speak English; the excitement rarely needed translation. And while connecting with other volunteers through a sport we all loved dearly was wonderful and amazing, I do cherish the conversations with Brazilians about their country the most.

Céline (far right) with fellow volunteers in Rio de Jeneiro, Brazil for the Olympics.

Having a special relationship with South America after spending three wonderful months there after high school and working in a human rights organisation for indigenous people during an internship for my studies, I had soon realised how little South American topics played a role in major news in Europe. Maybe it is simply too far away, or maybe their role is not significant enough in global markets, but news from South America usually only makes it to European media in times of natural catastrophes or major political unrest.

So while I had seen some of the coverage about the protests in Brazil and the wish for an impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff, I had never fully gotten just how fed up Brazilians were with the continuous problem of corruption in their country and how eager they were to talk about it.

While a large portion of my information comes from in-depth talks with Brazilians I actually got to sit down with in hostels or my Airbnb host Paolo, even when I got into an Uber and it was a simple ten minute ride, the huge problem of ‘corrupcão’ – corruption – came up. Having been to Brazil only three years prior, this huge change in attitude astonished me. While I had realistically not discussed politics at all during my first trip, now conversations about it started out of the blue.

First I believed this was only going to be the case in Rio, where people were directly impacted by the Olympic Games, but it ran like a red thread through my travels across Brazil and the huge gap between rich and poor, the feeling of helplessness against such a deeply rotten political system, but at the same time the strong wish to change something popped up everywhere.

I have rarely seen a people so passionately discussing politics on a daily basis.

Both the huge corruption scandal around the oil company Petrobras, in which even beloved former President Lula da Silva was supposedly involved, as well as a growing recession have shown the unfairness of the political system in which corruption has played and continues to play a huge role, which is especially hard on Brazil’s poor population and continuously widens the gap between rich and poor.

For my job in the Olympics I moved from Rio´s glamorous and touristy Zona Sul to one of its poorer suburbs: Coelho Neto, a much more realistic place to understand the reality of living in Brazil than the beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema. The huge apartment blocks and the growing favelas along the mega street Avenida Brazil are not what most tourists will see, simply because it is not the nicest looking and also because these suburbs can be really dangerous for foreigners. For the people living in these poorer areas, who are clearly the majority of the Brazilian population, life has gotten increasingly more difficult over the last years.

Rio from above.

As I buy some groceries, my Airbnb host Paulo raises his eyebrows, “This is really expensive.” My shopping is about 10 Euros, not something I would realistically consider ‘splurging.’ “Two years ago this would have been half the price,” he tells me. Prices have gone up majorly due to the recession and the poorer population is increasingly suffering from it.

Social initiatives proposed by the worker´s party, Partido dos Trabalhadores, over their presidencies, from 2011 until the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, have been able to close some of the gap between the rich and poor, but larger control of the state in the economy has slowed down Brazil’s formerly rapid economic growth leading to large scale unemployment and growing poverty. This dissatisfaction with the government and the perceived wrong spending of huge sums of money for the World Championship and Olympic Games have lead to large scale demonstrations all over the country.

However not all Brazilians think the impeachment of Dilma Roussef is the right call, in fact the words “Fora Temer” (Out with Temer) are visible in every city I visit during my travels in Brazil. Temer – the former vice president – took office without official elections after Dilma´s impeachment to serve until what would have been the end of Dilma’s time in office January 1st 2019. For some Brazilians despite the fact that it is in line with the constitution, this is a crime against democracy. Dilma was impeached over supposedly taking loans from state banks without congressional approval, however this has been quite common practice in Brazil and some voices wonder if this is not simply an excuse to end the workers party´s long time leading period. “I don’t love Dilma or her politics” Flora a film student I meet in a hostel in Florianopolis tells me “but I think the accusations are just an excuse to get her out of office, because her controlled economy kept the rich from making too much money”.

Brazil will probably need some time to recover from the unrest, the major political scandals and the Petrobras corruption scheme. It is certain that Brazil remains a deeply divided country for some time to come. And while volunteering for the Olympics might be still seen as supporting a majorly corrupt organisation, it has shown me not only the wonderful way in which sports and passion can connect people, but has given me a much broader and deeper understanding of the underreported political situation in Brazil as well as the struggles in this country that I could have never understood, had I not been there for the Olympics.

Céline Sonnenberg

Photo Credit: Céline Sonnenberg

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Football: Two Sides of the Pitch

Fajar Adhiprabawa — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 17:14:37 +0000

An industry requires capitals, and one of the prerequisites of a successful industry is a healthy human capital in the form of its labors. Development in political economy has resulted in the rules and procedures on how governments and private sector should protect workers’ rights as workers’ well-being is part of the employers’ responsibility. In this aspect, cases of human rights violation found in Brazil and Qatar display a horrifying image that is the football industry.

In a football match, two sides fight it out for 90 minutes trying to score more, and to concede less than the other team for two halves, separated by a commercial break. Players wear eye-catching jerseys and boots, with logos of well-known manufacturers and sponsors attached. 80.000 fans cheer for their clubs. Stadiums look ever so immense. ‘The beautiful game’ is indeed irresistible.

Football is t he most popular sport in the world, and attracts more people than any other sports does. Last year’s FIFA World Cup 2014 final match between Germany and Argentina was watched by more than 1 billion viewers worldwide, making it the most-watched event in the history of sport. 672 million tweets were sent related to the event held in Brazil, in contrast to ‘just’ over 40 million tweets on Sochi Winter Olympics, the Super Bowl’s 24.9 million tweets and 17.7 million tweets generated by the NBA Finals. With the staggering attention it draws, the football industry has had no trouble growing into a multi-billion dollar industry.

Kharkiv Stadium

The clubs, main actors in the industry have three main sources of income: matchday revenue, broadcasting, and commercial rights. Matchday revenue comes from stadium ticket sales – it is the smaller bit. Broadcasting and commercial rights – including advertising, branding, naming rights, and sponsorships, make up the biggest part of professional clubs’ revenues.

Financial service firm Deloitte found that in the 2012/13 football season, revenues of the big five European leagues grew by 5%, accumulating to €9.8 billion. English Premier League, the top football league filled with the world’s richest clubs just concluded a deal with Sky and BT Sport, which resulted in a record contract of £5.1 billion paid to EPL clubs for live broadcasting rights for all seasons from 2016 to 2019 seasons. Merely a decade ago, the number was nowhere near today’s amount, at just £1 billion.

This trajectory of capital allows clubs to spend millions on buying new players and paying the exorbitant wages of their top eleven footballers on the field. The likes of Wayne Rooney, Eden Hazard, Radamel Falcao, and Sergio Aguero, all under 30 year-old, have the fortune to drive sport cars, dine at luxurious five-star restaurants, and live in high-end apartments in London and Manchester, all thanks to their comfortable incomes upwards of £300.000 weekly. The average annual salary of a Premier League player is at an all-time high, £2.3million, and dwarfs other industries’ employees’ wages. Players’ services are bought for hefty sums, too. Gareth Bale and Cristiano Ronaldo were transferred for no less than £80m each, after which the player’s new clubs can make more millions from shirt sales, name rights, and sponsorships.

Protest against the Confed Cup in Brazil

On the other side of the pitch, reality is not as sweet. The preparations of for holding prestigious events such as the World Cup often unravel problems that previously had been ignored. Both Brazil as host of the 2014 World Cup and Qatar as the host of the 2022 World Cup have been put into the spotlight, amidst accusations of massive misappropriations human rights violations. As if the controversy surrounding the football governing body FIFA was not enough.

One Rafael Braga Vieira was walking in the street of Rio de Janeiro when he was confronted by Brazilian police. The city was in high tension following month-long protests, in that particular night hundreds of thousands demonstrators were dispersed by police. Rubber bullets were shot, tear gas was thrown. He was on his way to his aunt’s house, carrying two bottles of cleaning products to give to her.

Rafael says the police stopped him, arrested, and then beat him. Police accused him of being part of the demonstration and charged him for ‘carrying explosives without authorization’. A report by Amnesty claimed ‘the forensic department concluded that the chemicals in the products couldn’t possibly have been used as explosives’. Even so, Rafael was still sentenced to five years of prison for petty theft.

Workers’ apartments in Dohar

In Qatar, violations have proven to be even more concerning. A Guardian investigation into construction project for the 2022 FIFA headquarters in Qatar 2022 found that: 82 Indian workers had died in a 5 months period and reported 44 Nepalese migrant workers died in two months of highly unacceptable violations of workers’ rights. Although Qatar national labor law – Ministerial Resolution No. 16 of 2007 – specifies that workers should not work from 11.30am to 03.00pm, many workers claimed to have been working up to 12 hours a day in the summer, when temperatures easily reach 50°C.

Migrant workers reported issues of hunger, retained salaries by employers, overcrowded and insanitary housing, and other maltreatments attributed to the Qatar government. Exposure to uncovered septic tanks, overflowing sewage, and deprivation of running water have been revealed.

Many migrant workers are struggling to survive during the period of their contracts, and may not even return home after the fulfilment of the contract. Reports suggest employers have been blackmailing workers into signing statements stating they have been paid for their work, leaving them penniless.

When British human rights researchers Krishna Upadhyaya and Ghimire Gundev visited Doha to investigate the treatment of migrant workers in Qatar, the two went missing on their last day of stay. Even after almost six days of the two’s disappearance, no official statement had been issued by the Qatari authorities. Calls for significant improvements in the infrastructure projects’ employment policy have been echoed by many governments and organizations.

It is striking to see the development of football showing two sides of progress that are in stark contrast to each other. The business continues to grow exponentially, allowing for more funds to be distributed within the industry, while the other side displays a worrying image of serious human rights violations, a high death toll amongst workers and unresponsive government officials doing their best to avoid addressing and tackling these issues.

By Fajar Adhiprabawa

Image credit:

Picture 1: Aleksandr Osipov, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Picture 2: Sebástian Freire, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Picture 3: Richard Messenger, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

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