{"id":5783,"date":"2014-02-07T12:14:09","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T04:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinaworker.info\/?p=5783"},"modified":"2014-02-15T13:48:08","modified_gmt":"2014-02-15T05:48:08","slug":"sochi-winter-olympics-breaking-all-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinaworker.info\/en\/2014\/02\/07\/5783\/","title":{"rendered":"Sochi winter Olympics \u2013 breaking all records!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Corruption, LGBT rights and environmental destruction in focus as \u2018Putin\u2019s Games\u2019 open<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Rob Jones, Moscow<\/p>\n<p>When the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2014 winter Olympics to the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi, eyebrows were raised at the cost of $12 billion.\u00a0Now it has been revealed that $50 billion has been spent, more than the cost of all previous winter games taken together.\u00a0A 30-mile road-rail link from Sochi up to the ski-slopes has been built that is so expensive that one Russian magazine said it would have been cheaper to surface the road with caviar than asphalt!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Corruption<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Mushrooming corruption has plagued the project. The contract for the biathlon facilities was awarded to the company \u201cRosengineering\u201d, owned by Premier Medvedev\u2019s ski constructor, which also has one of President Putin\u2019s judo sparring partners on the board of directors. This is one of many examples.\u00a0Although Russia promised that 40% of investment would come from private funds, big business has stumped up less than $1.5 billion. 96% of the costs have come from state resources. But private business still reaps the rewards.<\/p>\n<p>The Monarch Construction Company part-owned by the son of vice-president of the state Olympic company is investing just 14% of the $145 million cost of the main IOC office in Sochi, but has been promised ownership of the building after the games.\u00a0The games are intended mainly for Russia\u2019s new elite. Tickets to the opening night cost between \u00a3350 and \u00a3900 &#8211; 50% of Russians earn less than \u00a3350 a month.<\/p>\n<p>The Russian government, contradicting the \u2018Olympic spirit\u2019, is offering each Russian gold medallist in Sochi $122,500.\u00a0The people who pay for this are, of course, ordinary Russians and in particular those who worked on the Olympic sites and local residents.\u00a0Most construction work has been done by cheap \u201cmigrant\u201d labour. The word \u201cmigrant\u201d in Russia applies to those travelling from other regions within the country.<\/p>\n<p>Workers\u2019 rights have been widely ignored during the construction. Wages have often not been paid or payment severely delayed, long overtime and holidays have been worked with no extra pay.\u00a0At least 25 workers have been killed in industrial accidents during the site construction. These are not isolated incidents but have arisen because the government passed a law removing all responsibilities on employers to pay minimum wage rates and ensure health and safety on Olympic sites.<\/p>\n<p>The environment has been badly damaged. In addition Sochi, with a sub-tropical climate, is about the only part of Russia that does not have a guaranteed snowfall.\u00a0Not that a little detail like this will block big business. Millions of cubic metres of last year\u2019s snowfall have been stored, ready for use in the games.\u00a0Thousands of artificial snow machines supplied by water from two new reservoirs will supplement the natural snowfall, if there is one.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/media.chinaworker.info\/2014\/02\/Sochi-e1391669147419.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-5785\" alt=\"Sochi\" src=\"http:\/\/media.chinaworker.info\/2014\/02\/Sochi-600x331.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"331\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Residents of the city are increasingly unhappy that resources can be found to make snow, while sewerage and electric light for ordinary residents are not seen as priorities.\u00a0The regime is petrified a terrorist act will take place. The North Caucasus is an ethnic and social cauldron. Unemployment in neighbouring areas can reach 50% while wages are less than \u20ac100 a month.<\/p>\n<p>There are, on average, six to eight terrorist acts a month in the region, the latest being two deadly suicide bombings leaving 34 dead in Volgograd in December.\u00a0Sochi has been turned into a military camp. 100,000 police, troops, FSB agents and Cossacks have been mobilised to protect the city. Russian warships and two US warships are patrolling Sochi\u2019s Black Sea coast.<\/p>\n<p><strong>LGBT rights<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Huge attention internationally is being addressed to how Putin is shoring up his authoritarian regime by resting on backward prejudices and attitudes.\u00a0A new repressive law has been passed supposedly banning pro-LGBT propaganda to minors, but in reality introducing severe restrictions on LGBT rights.\u00a0This has led to calls for campaigns in defence of LGBT rights during the Sochi games itself, including calls for a boycott.<\/p>\n<p>The need for a campaign is clear as leading Russian figures including Putin continue to make homophobic comments, often equating LGBT rights with the misuse of children.\u00a0But while calls to boycott the Sochi Olympics are well meaning, the LGBT community in Russia can only be defended through an active and widespread campaign of propaganda and protests explaining why these attacks are taking place, and placing them in the context of the massive corruption and attacks on workers\u2019 rights and environment that have been a central feature of the Sochi Olympics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Corruption, LGBT rights and environmental destruction in focus as \u2018Putin\u2019s Games\u2019 open Rob Jones, Moscow When the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2014 winter Olympics to the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi, eyebrows were raised at the cost of $12 billion.\u00a0Now it has been revealed that $50 billion has been spent, more than the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":5784,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[148,124],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5783","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-international","8":"category-news"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Sochi winter Olympics \u2013 breaking all records! 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