The call for action against the World Cup in the United States is growing worldwide. Something like this also happened in 1978 because of human rights violations in Argentina. It became a great success.
A demonstration against the regime in Argentina, photo Hans Peters via the National Archives
There are still people who think that the Football World Cup is organized to give the best football players in the world a stage. Remarkable, because fifty years ago it became apparent that football was the most important side issue of this event.
Amnesty cannot and must not let such a meeting pass by without using it for its objectives in the best possible way
Twelve years of chaos
The 1978 World Cup was awarded to Argentina twelve years earlier, well before General Jorge Videla came to power in a bloody coup. During that period, the country was hit by coups, hyperinflation, attacks and an economic crisis.
FIFA was forced again and again to reconfirm that Argentina was indeed hosting the Football World Cup. This happened in September 1968 in a letter to Armando Ramos Ruiz of the Argentine Football Association. In the summer of 1974, the World Cup was seriously threatened after the death of President Juan Peron and the takeover of his wife Isabel, after which approximately 140 people were killed in violent clashes within a few months.
Videla’s coup made his country one of the most infamous dictatorships of its time. And then on July 7, 1976 there was the murder of Omar Carlos Actis, the president of the organizing committee. The regime then took over the entire organization, a clear political intervention.
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Human rights violators and environmental polluters
According to FIFA, politics and sport should always be separated, but the association did not find this political intervention a problem. Elsewhere in the world, the first questions were asked about the world championship in a country that structurally violated human rights. And then the regime also used the tournament as an instrument to escape international isolation. Football was therefore relegated to the most important sideshow of the world championship.
In Videla’s view, this was necessary, because after his coup there were more and more reports of human rights violations. Argentina therefore hired the American propaganda company Burson-Marsteller, which secretly wrote an opinion on how the World Cup could be used to put an end to the bad image of the regime.
Burson-Marsteller was not accidentally asked by the human rights abusers. In the late 1960s it was hired by Nigeria, which was in the midst of a genocide in the Republic of Biafra. Other major customers included the communist dictatorship of Romania and the company Union Carbidewhich was responsible for the 1984 Bhopal toxic disaster in India that killed approximately 15,000. In all those cases, the American spin doctors made as much money as possible to tell as little truth as possible. And that was exactly what Videla was looking for.
At the end of 1977, this collaboration was leaked and it turned out that Burson-Marsteller had made a report on how Argentina could shift global media attention. One of the tips was to point out the successes in agriculture under the leadership of Jorge Zorreguieta, the father of Queen Máxima.
Furthermore, the names of the most important media companies in the world and the most prominent journalists were mentioned, all of whom wrote negatively about the dictatorship. They were to be invited on a carefully planned trip through Argentina, in the presence of willing women, ‘true representatives of Argentina’s healthy youth’.
These influential journalists were even attacked in their own country by the Argentine regime. “Taking into account the leading members of the profession,” Burson-Marsteller reported, “we are setting up a system of infiltration of the leading newspapers and magazines.”
This also happened in the Netherlands, including at NRC Handelsblad and the magazines Elsevier, The Hague Post in Accent.
Political scene on Waterlooplein in Amsterdam in protest against the Football World Cup in Argentina. Photo Rob C. Kroes via the National Archives
Amnesty International
The secret political mission of Videla and Burson-Marsteller had failed as soon as the report was published. It opened the eyes of human rights activists, who then made a worldwide call for actions against this world cup.
After archival research at the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam, it appears that this was even the final push for Amnesty International for an international campaign around this world championship. This brought an end to a months-long discussion about whether or not Amnesty should get involved in a sporting event. “Amnesty cannot and must not let such a meeting pass without using it in the best possible way for its objectives,” reads an internal message from the Dutch branch dated December 27, 1977.
On January 20, 1978, there was an international meeting at the headquarters in London, after which on the same day all national departments were informed of a campaign in April and May. It was expressly stated that a boycott call for the world championship was not part of the strategy, but that the actions were aimed at public information and increasing pressure on their own governments to take measures against Videla’s regime. For the first time in Amnesty’s history, a sporting event was used for a global human rights campaign.
Blood on the post
That campaign has now been forgotten in the Netherlands, because Freek de Jonge and Bram Vermeulen of Dutch Hope also took action at the end of January. They called on the Dutch national team to boycott the World Cup, in contrast to Amnesty. The Dutch team eventually went, which means that with retroactive effect there is still the idea that all actions surrounding the 1978 World Cup failed.
That conclusion is incorrect, because the various campaigns were very successful, especially those of Amnesty International. After all, the aim was to make the world aware of the atrocities of the Argentine regime, in which the human rights organization succeeded. Media analysis in digital newspaper archives shows that the number of newspaper reports on Argentine human rights violations doubled in 1978 compared to the previous year. More than half of those stories were also about the actions of Amnesty International and Neerlands Hoop, with which the public information strategy had been successful.
Final without Dutch representation
Under this enormous pressure, the Dutch government decided not to send any representatives to the tournament, even when the Dutch had qualified for the final. The government was too busy discussing the cuts, was the official statement, but that was nonsense. Four years earlier, the government had sent no fewer than thirteen representatives, for whom a program was quickly drawn up. It therefore did not seem particularly credible that they were suddenly all so incredibly busy in 1978.
This also applied to State Secretary Wallis de Vries, responsible for sports affairs, with his conclusion that he could no longer travel to Buenos Aires at short notice. In 1978 there was simply a Dutch political and diplomatic boycott of the Football World Cup, but without calling it that.
So there wasn’t fewer written about human rights in Argentina, but more. So much so that the Dutch government no longer dared to send anyone to Argentina – exactly the opposite of what Videla had intended. The 1978 actions were a great success, thanks to Amnesty International and Dutch Hope.
