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Liz Cambage: basketball player and social justice advocate
Photo:
Brian Cassey / AAP / imago images
The Australian basketball player Liz Cambage wants to consider an Olympic boycott of the Tokyo Games in protest against the lack of equal treatment for athletes in her home country.
The 29-year-old from the Las Vegas Aces from the US professional league WNBA denounced the lack of diversity on an advertising image from the Australian Association for the Summer Games.
The picture corresponds to a "whitewashed Australia," wrote Cambage on Instagram.
There are eight white Olympic and Paralympic athletes in the photo.
"How am I supposed to represent a country that cannot represent me!" Wrote Cambage.
The association really does everything to push People of Color out of the foreground.
"Until I see that you are doing more, I will sit out this time," wrote the 2012 Olympic bronze medalist: "Australia, finally wake up."
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Cambage in the national shirt of Australia in 2018
Photo: Zheng Huansong / Xinhua / imago images
Cambage posted a video of Indigenous Australian Cathy Freeman, who won gold in the 400m at the 2000 Sydney Games, and wrote, “Just to remind you that Australia's greatest sporting moment was thanks to a black indigenous woman is. "
On a second Australian advertising image for the summer games, however, the indigenous rugby player Maurice Longbottom can be seen.
Cambage had commented on this photo with the sentence that even a fake tan does not represent diversity.
There was criticism for this in the social networks.
Cambage asked Longbottom's forgiveness.
She said she knew who Longbottom was and that her comment was directed at the other athletes in the photo.
Cambage is a vocal advocate of social justice and a critic of the Australian treatment of indigenous Australians.
She supports the Black Lives Matter movement in the USA, where she lives.
At the same time, she said it was hypocritical that Australians were so concerned about the treatment of African Americans in the US while ignoring violence against tribal peoples in Australia.
Australia struggles with its colonial past and the inequality between indigenous people and the rest of the population.
At the beginning of the year, however, Australia had changed its national ahmyne as a sign of recognition for the indigenous population.
The threat of protest is already having an effect
The Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) has already responded to Cambage's criticism and admitted a mistake.
The athletes who were "made available to the sponsor could and should have better reflected the rich diversity of athletes representing Australia at the Olympics," the association said.
The broad diversity should now be shown in further photo shoots.
"Australia, if you have a problem with my words, you are the problem," Camgabe said.
The association's apology "wouldn't bring anything, actions would bring something."
She is currently in the US preparing for the upcoming WNBA season with the Las Vegas Aces.
In the US league, she holds the record for the most points scored in a game (53 points).
jan / dpa / Reuters
