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Pictures from the Ice Hockey World Championship 2019 in Bratislava
Photo: Monika Skolimowska / dpa
The 2021 Ice Hockey World Championship will take place entirely in Riga, Latvia.
This was announced by the world association IIHF.
The award of the tournament to the original co-host of Latvia, Belarus ruled by the ruler Alexander Lukashenko, was publicly criticized.
Tens of thousands have regularly taken to the streets in Minsk since the presidential election in August (read more about the chronicle of the protests here).
The autocrat Lukashenko and his regime react with violence, opponents are brutally persecuted and imprisoned.
More than 30,000 people have already been arrested and almost 200 political prisoners are in custody.
Thousands fled the country in fear of Lukashenko's thugs and security authorities.
In such a situation, a dictator should not host an ice hockey World Cup, criticized human rights activists, opposition members, western politicians (for example of the Bundestag) and Belarusian athletes.
In mid-January the IIHF Belarus withdrew the tournament after a long hesitation after the pressure from sponsors had become too great.
In the meantime, the association had considered having parts of the tournament held in Herning in Denmark or the Slovak capital Bratislava instead.
IIHF President René Fasel said, however, that the association wanted to have the tournament take place in one place due to the coronavirus pandemic in order to reduce the risk of infection.
In this way it is possible to find »an inexpensive» bubble «solution« and travel can be avoided.
During the tournament, which is to take place from May 21st to June 6th, the players of the 16 participating teams will be accommodated in a hotel.
The game will be played at two venues, the Riga Arena and the Olympic Sports Center, which are only 150 meters apart.
Fasel had long stuck to his plans for a World Cup in Belarus and, shortly before the tournament was withdrawn, he was filmed giving Lukashenko a friendly hug at a meeting.
At that meeting between Fasel and Lukashenko, the head of the Belarusian ice hockey federation was also present: Dimitrij Baskov.
According to research by independent Belarusian media, he was present when the opposition member Roman Bondarenko was beaten in a Minsk backyard in mid-November by a masked thug of the regime in the presence of other masked people so that the young man later died in hospital.
Now the Ice Hockey World Championship is supposed to take place in a Latvian bubble instead of the Belarusian dictatorship.
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