State-backed UAE and Bahrain teams under scrutiny ahead of Tour de France
As the Tour de France is set to begin this weekend, the participation of two teams linked to Gulf states - the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain - is coming under the microscope.
The favourite to win this year’s tour is the undisputed best male bike rider in the world, Tadej Pogacar, from Slovenia.
He has won four of the last six Tour de France titles, all of which were for UAE Team Emirates XRG (previously known as UAE Team Emirates).
The team has sat at the top of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) world ranking since 2023, and is the dominant force in the sport.
As well as the Tour de France, its star rider Pogacar has also won the Giro d’Italia, two World Championship Road Races and a string of one-day classics.
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But ahead of the Tour de France, human rights groups have written to the UCI calling for it to suspend UAE Team Emirates XRG’s licence over the Gulf state’s connection to war crimes and genocide in Sudan.
They also called for Team Bahrain Victorious’ suspension over rights abuses in the kingdom.
Fair Square, Sudan Unlimited, Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (Bird) and Christian Solidarity Worldwide co-signed the letter, seen by Middle East Eye.
MEE reached out to the UCI, UAE Team Emirates XRG and Team Bahrain Victorious for comment.
Team 'represents entire nation of UAE'
The letter notes that the UAE Team is under the financial and political control of the Emirati state.
On its LinkedIn page, the team says it “has the aim of representing an entire nation, the UAE”.
After Pogacar won the Tour de France last year, he and his teammates in Paris chanted in unison “U-A-E! U-A-E!”.
The team's main sponsors are state controlled: Emirates airline is owned by the Dubai government, while XRG - the investment wing of the country’s main oil company - is owned by the Abu Dhabi government.
The joint letter notes that when the team was set up in 2017, one of its founding sponsors was International Golden Group, a UAE military contractor.
That contractor was four years earlier identified by a UN panel of experts as having provided weapons to armed groups in Libya, in breach of a UN arms embargo.
International Golden Group does not currently appear to be a sponsor of the UAE Team, though its logo featured on the team’s jerseys as late as 2021 - well after the UN report.
The rights groups refer to “irrefutable evidence” that the UAE - which controls the team - is the main financial and military backer of the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group in Sudan.
MEE has reported on how the UAE has supplied the RSF with weapons through a complex network of supply lines and alliances stretching across Libya, Chad, Uganda, and Somalia.
Since Sudan's war began in April 2023, RSF fighters have been accused of widespread massacres and abuses, including of committing a genocide in Darfur.
“We know that the UAE uses sports teams to project a positive, sanitised image of itself while at the same time offering material and political support to the RSF in Sudan, who stand accused of genocide, and who may commit further atrocities in El-Obeid,” Alex Carlen, of Fair Square, told MEE.
The rights groups wrote that the participation of the team in UCI events acted “as a vehicle for the international branding and promotion of the UAE”.
“Cycling’s most prominent and celebrated races have become a very public platform that the UAE state is using to project a positive image of the UAE, which stands in marked contrast to the violence and repression that underpins its power,” the letter states.
Bahrain team founded by senior royal
The groups call for the suspension of Team Bahrain Victorious, which will also compete at this month’s Tour de France.
That team was founded by Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa, a prominent member of Bahrain’s royal family who is commander of Bahrain’s royal guard, and head of the country’s youth and sports council.
'The UCI cannot continue to allow state-backed teams to use its highly popular and historic competition to advance their own political interests'
- Alex Carlen, Fair Square
According to its website, the cycling team “represents a powerful platform for showcasing the ambition, optimism and global outlook of the Kingdom of Bahrain”.
Rights groups noted in the letter to UCI that Bahrain has for over a decade, since protests in 2011, cracked down on dissent, arrested opposition figures and effectively ended freedom of expression in the country.
Bird wrote to the UCI in 2019 calling for it to disclose the findings of an ethical review conducted into the Bahrain team and to consider human rights concern in future renewals of licences.
The UCI responded at the time that “the question of whether the government of Bahrain mistreats its citizens and its athletes in particular, is clearly beyond the jurisdiction of our Commission”.
Carlen said that the UCI could not continue to allow state-backed teams to “use its highly popular and historic competition to advance their own political interests”.
“Cycling as a sport has an opportunity here to set a precedent and put the focus back on the competition rather than an association with human rights violations,” he said.
Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, director of Bird, said that the UCI's leadership could not claim to uphold human rights whilst allowing governments like Bahrain and the UAE to “sportswash their records”.
“The UCI's own rules make clear that it has a duty to protect the reputation and integrity of the sport. If it does not regard war crimes and grave human rights abuses as a reputational risk, then it has set the bar dangerously low,” he told MEE.
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