Bayern Munich accused of turning blind eye to human rights

Bayern Munich accused of turning blind eye to human rights in Saudi Arabia

• German MPs critical of Bayern’s friendly against Al-Hilal
• Bayern also accused of upsetting president of Saudi club



Bayern Munich's Franck Ribéry takes a shot on goal during their friendly match against Saudi Arabia's Al-Hilal. Photograph: Mohammed Mashhur/AFP/Getty Images

Bayern Munich returned from a training camp in the Middle East to a barrage of criticism over a friendly played in Saudi Arabia, with some politicians and fans claiming the club had turned a blind eye to human rights violations.

The German champions, a leading global football brand, spent just over a week at a training camp in Qatar earlier this month before playing a friendly against Al-Hilal in Saudi Arabia on Saturday and returning to Germany a day later.

Qatar, where the 2022 World Cup will be staged, has been under scrutiny over widespread reports of human rights violations against migrant workers building stadiums for the tournament. Bayern’s game in Saudi Arabia also coincided with the uproar over the flogging in the country of activist and blogger Raif Badawi.

“Sport has a strong voice but it does not use it at the points where it makes sense and can be helpful,” the Social Democratic Party MP and head of the parliamentary committee on sport, Dagmar Freitag, told Süddeutsche Zeitung on Tuesday. “Footballers don’t have to be politicians but they should be aware of human rights conditions and could set examples.”

The Greens spokesman for sports politics issues, Özcan Mutlu, said Bayern should never have played the game in Saudi Arabia. “I find this behaviour shameful. Unnecessary. There is no honour to have a friendly game in Riyadh when, so to speak, right next to the stadium the blogger Badawi is flogged 1,000 times and has his skin pulled off his back,” Mutlu said.

Bayern, one of the richest clubs in the world, with a turnover of more than €500m (£381m), said the Saudi Arabia game was a sponsored event by one of its commercial partners while the Qatar trip offered perfect working conditions for the Bundesliga leaders. The Bayern coach, Pep Guardiola, was also a vocal supporter of Qatar’s bid to land the 2022 World Cup.

According to Bild, during the same trip, the German club were also accused of upsetting the president of Al-Hilal, Abdulrahman bin Musa’ad, after players of the team were refused entry to a banquet hall where they were supposed to have dinner with the Bayern players. “This is shameless and unacceptable, my team was barred from entry. It was confirmed to us that we would have dinner together,” Bin Musa’ad was reported to have said.

However, the Bayern media director, Markus Hörwick, passed off the event as a misunderstanding. “We waited for team in the [banquet] hall,” he said. “As guests we could not influence access permissions where we were.” According to the German tabloid, the club plan to apologise.

Guardian