The effectiveness of this campaign always made me doubt myself and my research many times. Am I looking at it as a fan? Am I cherry picking facts? Am I seeing greys where the actual reality is black and white? While there may be evidence for some or all of it, I've also realised the deeply fractured nature which seperates how the world sees atrocities and abuse. That weighs on my mind and that drives my urge to respond to hypocrisy of many journalists and fans of other clubs.
I totally get the need to protest capital punishment that Saudi Arabia meted out to it's prisoners a few days ago, I get the need to protest the horrors of the Yemen war or the Libyan war. But it is also important to note the reasons for these wars (and not the atrocities of war effort itself, there is no justifying that) is an existential one for these countries. The Arab Spring movement in the middle east 11 years ago was in large parts to bring in more conservative Islamist regimes in power. But the fact that these movements are focussed on stopping the modernisation of the Middle East is something that one never reads about.
In 2015, a series of US aeriel bombing raids decimated a hospital in Kunduz, this hospital was run by Médecins Sans Frontières. Days prior to the attack MSF had clearly given accurate location of the hospital to the US authorities. The US helicopter gunships continued to bombthe hospital for a while half an hour after the US authorities received an SOS phone call from the MSF. 42 people died and 30 were injured. Now attacking a hospital is in direct contravention to the Geneva convention hence NATO and other bodies said that they are investigating this attack but all of those haven't turned up with no findings, President Barack Obama apologied for the attack and called it a mistake. The US officials claimed (and this claim was widely carried in the news outlets) that they were targeting terrorists holed up inside the hospital (after initially claiming that this was collateral damage), this infact is a public admission of a war crime. Reading this made me realise that wars are portrayed in different ways. The unjustifiable can be justified basis who does it.
What this does is it creates an image of two distinct parts of the world, one a cultured civilised and peaceful world and the other run by primitive barbarians who are out of control . This perception is revealed by the cognitive dissonance that many feel when one highlights the realities of the countries in the Middle East.
Another clear example of this dissonance is in the writings of Barney Ronay of The Guardian He writes in 2018 about the Russia World Cup in an article titled "How Absurd to Boycott World Cup when Russia is so bound up to our economy" where he dismisses the Human Rights abuse in Russia with "No nation has a monopoly on acts of brutality, which history suggests are pretty evenly shared around". A practical take for sure. But when you consider his numerous articles regarding UAE and Manchester City, he calls the club and it's ownership as "deliberate and systemic, a macro-level manipulation of sport's status as the greatest shared global spectacle" and as "the way sports is used to launder reputation, to gloss a human rights record, to wash a little blood away". Neither has he or The Guardian addressed this seemingly hypocritic postions nor have they rectified the inaccuracate portrayal. (City isn't owned by a state, UAE has a much larger trade relationship with UK than Russia etc).
Let's face it, war is always the worst option to settle any issue. It only destroys lives of many, destabilises economies and ends up creating political vacuum and anarchy. So if so many countries are actively engaged in war and war crimes then tell me again who is morally superior to whom? But the approach by journalists and some of these Human Rights activists appears open ended and not to be designed to remedy the wrongs or to improve the morality of goverments in the middle east. Instead it looks like a way to score political points (Why else would someone back the right wing Al Islah in the UAE?) and to use tragedy as a way of achieving private goals.
I mean if your objective was to ensure that prisoners are treated well or to ensure humanitarian assistance is provided to those in a war zone, you would protest, lobby, collaborate and work on measurable outcomes. I have yet to see any of this in action either by the media or their human rights "experts" they seem to rely on.
And that moral superiority. Now for anyone living in Europe or America may think they live in a modern utopia but the sheer magnitude of atrocities committed on their behalf by their governments in the past, near past and why even right this minute, is actually quite staggering.
Half a million people dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, the well documented torture of men women and children in so many locations, the ravaging of natural resources of the middle east and Africa, leaving their people in abject poverty are the daily realities of life for over a hundred years.
None of the above crimes and the criminals involved have been brought to justice. With the wave of a magic wand the horrors inflicted by Belgium in Congo have been erased from public memory, today Belgium is one of the world's leading advocates of human rights. What of its own history? What has that country done to try and rectify the gross injustice? Even today you could get chocolates shaped like hands in Belgium, which most don't know is inspired by their policy of cutting hands of the Congolese people, millions of them. I don't know about you but that disgusts me.
There are very few countries that can lay claim to any kind of a moral highground that passes scrutiny. Just read up about what your country has done to its neighbours or its own minorities and the sharp glare of reality will make you flinch.
So, every country is bad. What now? That maybe the question. My view is that if we do not acknowledge our own gross inequities how can we begin to right the wrongs elsewhere? So, fight for the rights of the migrant workers, but do it with the intention to make their lives better, not to gain political or PR mileage through their suffering. Protest the war in Yemen or Ukraine with all your heart and mind but also do not neglect those fleeing the war from Syria or Palestine or China. Look at how ravaged African nations are because their lives have been upended to make the lives in the Western world better.
No one comes out of this smelling of roses. And that is important to acknowledge because without that the narrative justifies injustices faced by many in the hands of these so called morally superior countries and turn a blind eye to their suffering.
Or acknowledge that your reasons to attack a football club owned by a Middle Eastern prince is for political or partisan reasons and human rights is just a means to an end.
Apologies for the rant it's been building up in my heart and i needed an outlet to let it out.
