An Historical Reconsideration of GANEFO
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The Olympic Movement’s Response to the Challenge of Emerging Nationalism in Sport: An Historical Reconsideration of GANEFO Russell Field Assistant Professor Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Canada July 2011 Table of Contents Section 1: Introduction 1 1.1 : Background 1 1.2 : Scholarly significance 2 1.3: Review of literature 3 1.4: Sources and organization 4 Section 2: Events Leading to GANEFO 5 2.1: The IOC suspends the Indonesian NOC 5 2.2: The challenge of governmental/political interference in sport 6 Section 3: Preparing for GANEFO 9 3.1: Indonesia announces GANEFO 9 3.2: Philosophical objection: Political nature of the invitations to GANEFO 11 3.3: Procedural objection: Unsanctioned competition against athletes from non-member states 12 3.4: Formulating an IOC position on GANEFO: Engaging the IFs, educating the NOCs 13 3.5: Articulating and communicating an official position 15 Section 4: Events in Djakarta 18 Section 5: The Response to GANEFO 20 5.1: IF efforts to assess GANEFO 20 5.2: IOC investigations into the athletes who competed at GANEFO and the nations they represented 21 5.3: Who competed, who didn’t 23 5.4: Debating sanctions 27 5.5: Meting out sanctions 29 Section 6: Aftermath of GANEFO 31 6.1: Reinstating the Indonesian Olympic Committee 31 6.2 : Efficacy of GANEFO sanctions 32 6.3: Conclusions 34 i The Olympic Movement’s Response to the Challenge of Emerging Nationalism in Sport: An Historical Reconsideration of GANEFO Section 1: Introduction In the early-1960s, with international sport facing the difficult challenge of integrating nations divided by revolution and war, as well as other political challenges, it was a now little-remembered sporting event in Djakarta, Indonesia, that caused some of the greatest consternation in the offices of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and various International Sport Federations (IFs). These were what IOC Chancellor, Otto Mayer, called the “‘political’ minded ‘Emergency Forces Games’.”1 Organized by the Indonesian government, led by President Sukarno, the Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO) were, in the eyes of IOC President Avery Brundage “entirely political.”2 Hosted in 1963, and having repercussions in the Olympic community throughout 1964 in the build-up to the Tokyo Olympics, GANEFO’s import was that “the Indonesia Government has thrown down a challenge to all international amateur sport organizations, which cannot very well be ignored.”3 The challenge was two-fold: GANEFO represented a political intrusion into sport that the IOC abhorred, and procedurally, with the People’s Republic of China heavily involved in the event, meant that athletes who competed in Djakarta were likely to do so against countries unaffiliated with organized sport, a violation of IF rules. In a letter to the president of the Philippine Amateur Athletic Federation, Brundage made the case against GANEFO, linking these two strands, the philosophical and procedural objections: “There is such a thing as rules and regulations and these have been agreed to by over one hundred different National Olympic Committees and a score of International Federations. These rules prohibit political interference, and if they are not followed the result will be chaos.”4 In confronting the challenge presented by GANEFO, the IOC engaged supportive IFs, especially the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) and the Fédération Internationale de Natation (FINA). As the Marquess of Exeter, David Burghley, head of the IAAF, made clear, the threat of events such as GANEFO were taken just as seriously by the IFs. But what Exeter also made clear was that addressing these challenges would take a unified response from the IOC and the IFs: The IAAF and FINA are at full stretch fighting the biggest battle that has ever been fought to save amateur sport. If we lose, the politicians will then have the gate open to destroy the authority of our sport. It would be the end of the International Federations, and how long to you think the IOC would last if the International Federations were in the hands of political interests outside?5 1.1: Background This paper is a case study of the Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO) and its uneasy relationship with the IOC. GANEFO was an international multi-sport event that took place in Djakarta, Indonesia, in November, 1963. Approximately 3000 athletes and officials from—but not necessarily officially representing—anywhere from 35 to 51 nations (estimates at the time varied) met in the Indonesian capital and competed in 20 athletic events (virtually all of them Olympic and Western sports) as well as cultural festivities. Athletes hailed primarily from recently decolonized countries in Asia, 1 The Olympic Movement’s Response to the Challenge of Emerging Nationalism in Sport: An Historical Reconsideration of GANEFO Africa, and Latin America, which were labelled the “new emerging forces” by Indonesian President Sukarno in his attempt to situate his nation as a regional power. The largest teams (after the hosts), however, represented the Second World, the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union (and there were athletes in attendance who travelled from Western European nations). In such an environment, GANEFO was an explicit attempt to link sport to the politics of anti-imperialism (although its genesis was also related to diplomatic problems that arose from Indonesia’s hosting of the IV Asian Games in 1962). In response, the IOC expressed concern to the IFs that athletes might compromise their eligibility for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics by competing against athletes from non-recognized countries and, following GANEFO, athletes from Indonesia and North Korea faced such sanctions. Beyond any sporting consequences, however, Sukarno intended GANEFO to be the sporting arm of a larger unrealized political movement, but except for an Asian GANEFO hosted by Cambodia in 1966, the Games themselves were never held again. 1.2: Scholarly significance It is worth reconsidering GANEFO because it has been obscured by the higher profile struggles in the 1960s around sport and human rights in the U.S. and the South African anti-apartheid movement, and because GANEFO took place in southeast Asia, hidden by the more prominent glare of Western sport which has dominated understandings and histories of international sport. Yet regarding GANEFO as an Asian event is reason enough to reconsider it, both in an attempt to acknowledge the “other” within international sport and because in 1963 GANEFO was viewed as anything but a sideshow in the offices of Western institutions, both sporting and governmental. As historian Leena Laine has encouraged, Western Olympic and sport scholars need to re-evaluate how they “approach otherness … The same recognition might be necessary when one investigates the general effects of the International Olympic movement.”6 Consider also the Second World (or “communist” countries in the language of the Cold War, with the West being the First World and the emerging nations of the Southern hemisphere the Third World). During the Cold War, Second World involvement in GANEFO—as the Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China struggled over influence with the newly decolonized countries—meant that Sukarno’s Games, at least in theory, were a threat not just to the IOC’s legitimacy but also to the Olympic Games’ hegemony over international sport. GANEFO is not only understood by grasping the history of the Olympic Movement, rather the history of global sporting events, including the Olympic Games, requires an understanding of moments of contestation such as GANEFO. This case study, an historical reconsideration of GANEFO, examines a moment of political contestation in sport and adds to the scholarly understanding of contemporary debates about politics and sport. As a vehicle of protest, GANEFO was organized on the model of the global sporting event, pioneered by the modern Olympic Games. It included such symbols and rituals as a torch relay, a symbolic flame, a parade of athletes in front of the head of state, the raising of the specially designed flag of the GANEFO movement, opening and closing ceremonies, cultural exhibits, and adjudicated competitive athletic 2 The Olympic Movement’s Response to the Challenge of Emerging Nationalism in Sport: An Historical Reconsideration of GANEFO events that resulted in the awarding of medals. Although GANEFO was organized in ways that suggested the global sporting event was an ideologically neutral vehicle it did so while protesting against the perceived forms of repression symbolized by similar events. Understanding the anti-colonial movements of the 1960s, their use of sport as a tool of identity promotion, and the IOC’s response to newly emerging nations furthers the Olympic Movement’s understanding late-20th and early-21st century assertions of nationalism. 1.3: Review of literature Studies of GANEFO have focused upon the success of Sukarno’s efforts to link politics and sport. Writing after GANEFO, Pauker notes that “as an instrument of political warfare, the Games were a success,” with few diplomatic or sporting consequences as Indonesia’s Olympic Committee was reinstated by the IOC in time for the Tokyo Games.7 Sie proclaims GANEFO “a triumphant success” because “most of the emerging nations were represented, approximately 3,000 participants were reported to have taken part, and several world records were broken.”8 Lutan and Hong note that GANEFO “was intended to challenge the hegemony of Western power in sport, to divide and fragment the Olympic movement, to emphasize the political realities of the new world structure and to dramatize the political ambitions of the new and non-aligned states.” They suggest that, put to such a purpose, sport proved “an extremely valuable political and diplomatic resource.”9 Despite its success as a political tool, examinations of GANEFO are largely absent from scholarly histories of Indonesia and the period of Sukarno’s presidency.