Sports and politics

Sportspeople should be free to exercise their views

Conventional wisdom in sporting circles dictates that sports and politics are distinct activities and the twain should never meet. In reality, this separation is an artificial one. Like people in any other profession, sportspeople, too, can hold political views and should have the right to express them. Two incidents within a week of each other involving Muslim sportspeople in different continents brought the issue into the limelight once again. The first was a statement by Arsenal mid-fielder and German national footballer of Turkish origin Mesut Ozil. He criticised China’s treatment of the Uighur minority and wondered why the rest of