MOSCOW (Reuters) – Ice hockey’s international governing body said on Wednesday it had issued a five-year suspension against Dmitry Baskov, head of the Belarus Ice Hockey Association, for offences that included discriminating against athletes for their political views.
The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) said its disciplinary board had concluded Baskov “has tried to directly influence others to support the Belarus government and has threatened and discriminated Belarusian athletes because of their political opinion.”
“The Board also determined that Baskov abused his position as a representative of ice hockey in order to support the current President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko,” the IIHF said.
Belarus has been rocked by a political crisis in which many high-profile athletes have backed the opposition to Lukashenko, whom they accuse of rigging a presidential election last year and violently cracking down on demonstrators.
The Belarusian Ice Hockey Association said Baskov’s suspension was “unacceptable” and that it was considering an appeal to the decision at the Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
Baskov is a member of the Belarusian Olympic Committee’s executive committee and chairman of the board of Dynamo Minsk, a team in the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL).
Minsk, the Belarusian capital, had been scheduled to co-host the men’s ice hockey world championships this year but was stripped of hosting rights following unrest in the wake of the presidential election and because of concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lukashenko is an avid hockey fan. He regularly plays with senior Belarus officials and occasionally with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
(Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by Christian Radnedge)
