What if Putin hosted the Olympics today? Would we hesitate to boycott?
It's hard to see today's federal government, backed by public opinion, allowing Australians to go, but in 1980, after the USSR had invaded Afghanistan, the Fraser government recommended a boycott but let athletes and their governing bodies make up their own minds.
Nearly all took the view that sport existed outside politics. Most countries in the Olympic community were going (as they would now, led by China and India, which still trade freely with Russia; indeed, Russia has hosted a Winter Olympics and a FIFA World Cup since its first invasion of Ukraine in 2014). The athletes who had dedicated their lives to this goal didn't want to lose their one and only chance.
Subsequently, some of them were made to feel ashamed of going. There was no ticker-tape parade, though this was not unusual; there had been no such parades in 1972 or '76, and they did not become a regular event until later.
Forty-five years after the Moscow Games, Australia's 1980 Olympians have been officially recognised. Hearing Michelle Ford, Peter Hadfield and others speak of how they were shunned after Moscow is saddening, and if recognition lightens the burden they have carried, then it is warranted. Anthony Albanese said, in parliament, 'Today, on the 45th anniversary, we recognise all that you have achieved and acknowledge all that you have overcome. Take pride in both. You are Olympians, you are Australians, and you have earned your place in the history of the Games and our nation. Welcome to parliament, and welcome home.'
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What if, 45 years from now, a prime minister were to say to our athletes, 'Russia's invasion of Ukraine cast a dark shadow over what should have been your shining moment'. Those few words (but replace 'Ukraine' with 'Afghanistan') were Albanese's only reference to the invaded nation.
In the war that the Soviet Union started in 1979, nearly half of the country's 13 million people were killed, injured or displaced. The Soviets suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties. Their self-inflicted debacle in Afghanistan was, along with Korea and Vietnam, the most horrific of the Cold War stalemates. Its scale dwarfs what Russia has done, so far, to Ukraine.
We would have no hesitation boycotting Russia today for the 500,000 dead and injured in Putin's war. Yet the many more killed in Afghanistan were forgotten even as they died. Little or no independent media were allowed to report from the conflict. On Wednesday, Sussan Ley, to her credit, spoke empathetically about the Afghan refugees who resettled here and the rightness of Australia offering them a home.
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