The London defect

“Do you fear harm or mis­treat­ment if you return to your home coun­try? If “Yes,” explain in detail.”

—U.S. Appli­ca­tion for polit­i­cal asylum

“Most of the time, they don’t come back.”

—Emmanuel Tataw, Cameroon press attaché

Ath­letes train their whole lives to try to make it to the Olympics for the chance at earn­ing gold. They give up many of the other activ­i­ties that young men and women con­sider to be a nor­mal part of grow­ing up and they devote count­less hours to their craft and hope for an oppor­tu­nity to bring a medal home. Yet, for some who come to the Olympics from coun­tries torn by war, beset by poverty or ruled by oppres­sive regimes, the Olympics present an oppor­tu­nity that has noth­ing to do with ath­letic achievement.

Defec­tion, and the seek­ing of asy­lum in another coun­try, is noth­ing new or par­tic­u­larly unique. From Bene­dict Arnold’s defec­tion to the British dur­ing the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War to Lee Har­vey Oswald’s 1959 request for asy­lum in the U.S.S.R. (he returned to the U.S. in 1962) to the hun­dreds or per­haps thou­sands of cit­i­zens who fled East Ger­many for free­dom in the West, the process is a famil­iar one.

In the United States, requests for asy­lum are han­dled by the U.S. Cit­i­zen­ship and Immi­gra­tion Ser­vices office, now a divi­sion of the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity. Requests for asy­lum are gov­erned by form I-589 and, for per­sons resid­ing in Ohio, are to be filed with the immi­gra­tion ser­vice cen­ter in Nebraska.

Asy­lum can be requested based on race, reli­gion, nation­al­ity, polit­i­cal opin­ion, mem­ber­ship in a par­tic­u­lar social group or to avoid tor­ture. Spe­cific details about tor­ture, mis­treat­ment and false impris­on­ment are requested on the U.S. asy­lum appli­ca­tion. The crim­i­nal record of the appli­cant, their prior par­tic­i­pa­tion in any ques­tion­able groups or orga­ni­za­tions and any unex­plained delay in the fil­ing of their appli­ca­tion for asy­lum are all fac­tors that may result in their appli­ca­tion being denied.

The defec­tion of ath­letes dur­ing over­seas trips or com­pe­ti­tions is cer­tainly not unusual. Sev­eral of the Cuban base­ball play­ers now com­pet­ing in Major League Base­ball in the United States defected from their home­land dur­ing a com­pet­i­tive trip over­seas. The Olympic games are, of course, the most vis­i­ble of inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tions and are con­ducted under incred­i­bly tight secu­rity. Still, there is a long his­tory of ath­letes defect­ing dur­ing the Olympics.

In 1956, shortly after the Sovi­ets crushed the Hun­gar­ian rev­o­lu­tion, nearly half of the Hun­gar­ian team’s one hun­dred mem­ber del­e­ga­tion to the games in Mel­bourne defected. Sev­eral mem­bers of the Afghanistan del­e­ga­tion defected dur­ing the 1980 Moscow games and four Roma­ni­ans failed to return home from Canada after the 1976 games in Montreal.

Not all of the defec­tions take place at the games them­selves. Dur­ing the qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment for the 2008 games, nearly one third of the Cuban soc­cer team defected and dur­ing qual­i­fy­ing play for this year’s games one of Cuba’s male soc­cer player sought asy­lum in the U.S. and two female play­ers did the same in Canada.

Prior to the start of this year’s Olympics, three ath­letes from Sudan filed appli­ca­tions seek­ing asy­lum in the United King­dom. They did not com­pete in the Olympic Games. Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of their events seven ath­letes from Cameroon went miss­ing ear­lier this week from the athle­te’s vil­lage. While there was no offi­cial con­fir­ma­tion from the IOC or the British gov­ern­ment about a mass defec­tion, the head of Cameroon’s Olympic del­e­ga­tion con­firmed that the ath­letes likely defected and a spokesman for the coun­try said that it was unlikely that the ath­letes would return home.

Although grants of asy­lum in the U.S. fell sharply imme­di­ately fol­low­ing the Sept. 11 ter­ror­ist attacks, they quickly rose again and aver­aged more than 50,000 per year from 2005 to 2008. The coun­try host­ing the Olympics must pre­pare ath­letic facil­i­ties and infra­struc­ture, but it must also pre­pare for the defec­tions of ath­letes who do not wish to return home to trou­bled nations.

David Hej­manowski is a mag­is­trate and court admin­is­tra­tor at the Delaware County Juve­nile Court and a for­mer assis­tant pros­e­cut­ing attorney.

Posted by Dave Hejmanowski on Aug 9 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.