By Tony Attwood
- With the way football is going, is it time to laugh or cry?
- Refereeing in England is under constant attack. But why, and how can this be changed?
David Lammy, the secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom, has himself told Rwanda that it is likely to have its aid stopped unless it immediately stops attacking its neighbours.
So what we have is a situation in which Arsenal FC are actively supporting Rwanda while much of the rest of the world is condemning the country. That certainly makes me very uncomfortable, and I would hope would also make the majority of Arsenal supporters uncomfortable. The fact that PSG and Bayern Munich also have deals with the country is no excuse.
And for Arsenal, it is not as if a vast amount of money is at stake – it brings in about £10m a year to Arsenal, which could easily be replaced by any other deal. Of course, the club may stupidly not inserted a clause in the contract which allowed them to cancel the deal for nothing if the country went to war, but if so, the loss of the money would be worth it just to teach Arsenal’s promotions team a lesson.
But it should be clear that this is not an objection to Rwanda being a sponsor because the country is poor. It is because the country is at war. Promoting tourism to a country at war is just plain daft. Especially since Arsenal stated in its objectives when signing the deal that the point was to help Rwanda build a tourist industry. Not to help the government restrict civil rights and fight a war.
What I do like, however, is the rival Gunners For Peace campaign with its “Visit Tottenham” billboards. I was born in Tottenham and went to school there, and I do think we should not confuse N17 with the club that unfortunately also has a stadium there.
It is now a couple of months since the foreign minister of the UK, along with similar representatives of six other countries ranging from the USA to Japan condemned the “Rwanda-backed M23 offensive” in the Congo.
Yet that seems to make no difference to Arsenal who still carry the Rwanda brand on its shirts and stadium. Of course the argument could be that Arsenal didn’t know, when it signed the deal, that Rwanda was likely to go around starting wars or indeed offering to be a place that people escaping other countries and coming to the UK could be deported to.
But it would have been reasonable to assume that within the contract, there might be something that said that if Rwanda did anything to bring the good name of Arsenal FC into disrepute, the club could cancel the deal. And maybe the deal did say that, but the Arsenal board of directors hasn’t got around to doing anything yet. If that is so, I wish they would hurry up.
As it is, match after match, the good name of the club is ruined by the ridiculous logo on the players’ shirts, just at a time when the players themselves are doing everything possible to enhance the club’s name with such adventures as beating Real Madrid home and away. But apparently, the Rwandan president is an Arsenal supporter, so the deal goes on.
Now the fact is that no club can stop anyone saying she or he is a supporter, but that does not mean that the club has to make its supporters into business partners. And the ongoing mass killings in Rwanda suggest that this is not a country that Arsenal should be accepting funds from.
Of course, I have to make it clear I have no direct knowledge of the country, but when the United Nations issues statements speaking of the dead being left in the streets, what is surely clear is that the country needs to be helped to reform itself and ensure that it has a peaceful democratic future. The country funding Arsenal is surely no way to achieve that.
And given that the World Health Organisation is advising people not to go to Rwanda because of the health risk, again that is a reason for Arsenal not to wear the Visit Rwanda logo. If Arsenal are tied into a contract which they stupidly didn’t have a break clause within, (allowing them to cancel the deal if Rwanda became a war zone,) then the first thing we should know is who was stupid enough to sign that deal.
As things stands, the United Nations has clearly stated that Rwanda is giving support to the M23 rebel movement (known as the Armée révolutionnaire du Congo), which is responsible for a range of atrocities in the region
Indeed a recent report stated that Rwandan forces are running the M23 group, and are therefore responsible for its activities. Rwandan embassies in Europe have experienced protests against the war.