#umar kremlev

Anna Merlan at Mother Jones:

By the time J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump were falsely referring to her as a man, the lies about Imane Khelif had already traveled halfway around the world. Last week, two Olympic boxers—Khelif, from Algeria, and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan—were subjected to brutal international scrutiny about their sex and gender, and whether they were entitled to compete in women’s events; the attention on Khelif became particularly acrid after her opponent, Italian Angela Carini, quit 46 seconds into their bout, declaring that she had “never been hit so hard in my life.” A photo of the two women exiting the ring, Carini in tears, Khelif casting a glance, was widely shared, with people like Rowling—who’s promoted transphobic views for years, but has denied being transphobic—offering heated and derogatory commentary about Khelif.   “Could any picture sum up our new men’s rights movement better?” Rowling tweeted. “The smirk of a male who’s [sic] knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s just shattered.” 

While the attacks on Khelif are of a piece with familiar recent Western controversies over who is allowed to participate in girls’ and women’s sports, many of the articles and individuals magnifying the debate relied on or relayed the claims of a discredited group with strong ties to the Russian government, a deep grudge against the International Olympic Committee, and a seemingly vested interest in proving that the IOC-run games are, as the group’s leader has claimed, a venue for “sodomy.”

In trying to unravel what led up to this moment, many individuals and news outlets cited a statement released by the official-sounding International Boxing Association, which stated that both Khelif and Yu-Ting had previously been disqualified from competing in the IBA-administered Women’s World Boxing Championships in March 2023. The women were barred from that competition, which took place in New Delhi, following tests the organization has not publicly clarified, citing privacy rules. At the time, IBA president Umar Kremlev told a Russian state news agency that the women had been found to have “XY chromosomes” and claimed the two had “pretended to be women” and “tried to deceive their colleagues.” Even if the IBA’s findings were true, having XY chromosomes does not automatically make someone male—women with Swyer syndrome, a rare genetic condition, have XY for instance. Nor are XY chromosomes proven to constitute an “unfair advantage,” although that is exactly what an IBA official claimed in a press conference on Monday. One pediatrics expert told NBC in 2009—one of the innumerable times this issue has been raised in women’s sports—that such a claim was “malarkey.”

[...] When Khelif and Yu-Ting were disqualified by the IBA back in New Delhi, skeptics questioned how it benefited Azalia Amineva, a Russian fighter. The women were not ruled ineligible until after they’d already competed and Khelif had won a bout against the previously undefeated Amineva. While IBA officials said the sequence of events was due to a week’s delay in being provided testing results, as the Associated Press has pointed out, the decision meant the Russian fighter’s perfect record was retroactively restored. Kremlev isn’t shy about expressing a broad fixation on gender and sexuality, with him, as the sports website Defector has pointed out, decrying the IOC on YouTube for promoting “outright sodomy and the destruction of traditional values.” In the wake of the Paris games’ opening ceremony, he blasted the spectacle, which featured queer performers, as “pure sodomy,” while saying the IOC “burns from pure devilry” and that its president is a “chief sodomite.” He also claimed that “men with changed gender are allowed to fight with women in boxing at the Olympics.” (Videos with such remarks have been helpfully subtitled in English to draw a wider, Western audience.) Last week, Kremlev announced the IBA would give $50,000 in prize money to the defeated opponents of Khelif and Yu-Ting.

[...] The Khelif affair captures English-speaking transphobes with rigid ideas about the nature of womanhood picking up on a politically motivated campaign from a discredited organization at open war with the IOC. Indeed, right-wing organizations in the United States, including the Independent Women’s Forum and CPAC, via its chair Matt Schlapp, have paid for sponsored posts on Musk’s X platform, calling her “a man“—posts that appear when users search for information on the controversy.

The International Boxing Association, which is a Kremlin-led body led by Umar Kremlev that is permanently banned from being the sanctioning body for Olympic boxers, has instigated a transphobic war against cis women boxers Lin Yu-ting and Imane Khelif.

So lets just sum this up, shall we?

The UK, USA and all of Europe is at war with Russia, because we think Vladimir Putin is an evil bastard who is trying to take over Ukraine. We think he is one of the most evil men in the world, and anyone who is associated with him is also an evil bastard who can’t be trusted.

Very few people disagree with this, and it is the primary reason that Russia are not allowed to take part in The Olympics.

Are you all with me so far?

Good.

There is an organisation called The International Boxing Association.

It is run by a man named Umar Kremlev. A man who is widely criticised for having very close ties with Vladimir Putin (you remember him, right?), for being associated with a Russian state owned oil company and for there being “irregularities” during the elections of 2021 and 2022. He is, in short, a very suspicious character and did I mention him being very close to Putin (the guy who is the reason Russia aren’t allowed in polite company or The Olympics).

He is also the reason why The IBA aren’t permitted to oversee boxing at The Olympics — the first time an international authority was ever expelled from The Olympics.

And — if this wasn’t enough — he was the man in charge when a woman named Imane Khelif was disqualified from the World Championships for “undisclosed reasons” just after she defeated the previously undefeated Azalia Amineva — the previously unbeaten Russian contender.

The IBA — under the direction of a Russian man who is close friends with Putin, and who disqualified someone who beat a previously unbeaten Russian contender — claimed she had “high testosterone levels” but then said “they had not undergone testosterone testing” (so quite how they knew how high her testosterone levels were is curious — did they just look at her and go “No — too high”?), then they said DNA testing proved she “had XY chromosomes” except there is no evidence that she has XY chromosomes, and the only evidence that The Russian lead IBA is willing to provide is “confidential” and shows “a competitive advantage”

So — to sum up — The IBA, which is run by a Russian who is close friends with someone most of the known world hates, and who the UK, USA and Europe is at war with, and who is suspected of being incredibly corrupt, banned a woman from The World Championship for no apparent reason other than she beat a Russian contender who was going to go for the gold medal.

Are you still with me? Because all of this is merely prologue. Now we get to the good stuff.

The woman at the centre of all this — Imane Khelif — is about to go for The Olympic Gold in Paris.

Now given everything I have just told you — that she was banned from The World Championship by a corrupt organisation run by a man with ties to the Russian regime because she beat a Russian contender who was going to fight for the gold and so far there has been no evidence whatsoever to back up the reason she was banned — where do you think the press in the UK, USA and Europe would be on her performance in The Olympics?

Yes. That’s right. They want her kicked out of the contest.

The anti-trans cult is so fucking dedicated to the bigotry that they are willing to side with a man who runs a corrupt organisation, who is in bed with Putin, who has absolutely no proof to back up any of his claims and who banned someone because they dared to beat a Russian fighter just so they can continue to target a woman who has always been a woman and who can punch harder than another woman.

2023. Imane Khelif viene esclusa dal mondiale dall'IBA, organizzazione controllata da un oligarca russo corrotto.

2024: il CIO sconfessa tale decisione.

2025. L'IBA esclude di nuovo Imane Khelif.

Reazioni sovraniste: "Visto? Scacco matto, radical chic! E adesso come la mettiamo? Ora non parlate più, eh? Cosa c'è? Avete la cosa di paglia? La verità fa male? Questa è la prova definitiva!".

Per loro è come se si fosse aggiunto un tassello a sostegno delle loro idee.

Ehi, sovranisti, provo a spiegarvela in modo semplice: l'IBA è l'organizzazione corrotta di prima che ha confermato la sua linea sulla base dei test del 2023. Non c'è una "nuova prova". L'unico fatto confermato è che l'IBA fa schifo. Ci arrivate?

Alex Bollinger at LGBTQ Nation:

A Republican candidate for Missouri secretary of state is now using slurs on social media to talk about LGBTQ+ people. Candidate Valentina Gomez is among the many conservatives outraged at the Olympics for allowing Algerian boxer Imane Khelif to participate, even though she is a cis woman who has, according to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), met the eligibility requirements for the 2024 Olympic games. This year’s strict eligibility rules have prevented any trans woman from participating in the Olympics.

“These fa***ts should get their own fa***t category because before if a man hit a woman, it used to land him in jail. Now, it gets you a gold medal at the Olympics,” Gomez said, wearing an Olympic sweater. “Let me remind you: there’s no such thing as a chick with a d**k,” she concluded. “Keep women’s sports female.” Khelif was assigned female at birth and identifies as a woman, making her cisgender. She was treated as a girl in her rural community when she was growing up, and it’s unlikely that a trans child in rural Algeria would have been raised as a gender that didn’t match their outward appearance.

But many on the right have latched on to a statement last year from International Boxing Association (IBA) president Umar Kremlev, who said that DNA tests had “proved they had XY chromosomes and were thus excluded” from competing at IBA events. He also said that countries were recruiting cis men to compete in women’s sports. There is no evidence of that. Kremlev has long been criticized as an ally of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, using the IBA to extend Russian soft power. Putin has been using its anti-LGBTQ+ policies to differentiate Russia from Ukraine and the West, which he believes support LGBTQ+ rights because of U.S. brainwashing.

[...] Unlike the IBA, the IOC is permitting Khelif to compete but isn’t commenting on the results of gender testing, genetics, or the hormone levels of individual competitors other than to say that they meet the IOC’s eligibility rules. The IOC pulled recognition of the IBA last year due to a lack of financial transparency, which means that the IBA–unlike other individual sports organizations–has “no involvement in either the qualification for or the organization of” boxing at the 2024 Olympics.

With the Missouri primary elections coming this Tuesday, Secretary of State candidate Valentina Gomez continues her anti-LGBTQ+ hatred campaign by disparaging the LGBTQ+ community as “f***ots” in response to cis women Imane Khelif’s victories at the Olympics.

Every month we look at the best and worst communicators in the sports world from the last few weeks.

IMANE KHELIF & IBA

Gender has become a huge issue in sport as well as society.

Ever since South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya underwent tests to prove her gender back in 2009, and the LGBTQ+ community has found a voice in mainstream society, there have been questions raised about fairness and eligibility.

The issue was thrown back into the limelight during the Paris 2024 boxing competition when Italian boxer Angela Carini broke down in tears and quit her bout against the Algerian Imane Khelif after 46 seconds in a fight that sparked huge controversy at the Olympics.

Khelif is one of two boxers permitted to fight at the Games despite being disqualified from the women’s world championships last year for allegedly failing gender eligibility tests.

The International Boxing Association, (IBA) has had a difficult few years, with concerns over governance and integrity ultimately seeing it removed as boxing’s Olympic governing body by the International Olympic Committee (IOC)  in 2023.

Former President Gafur Rakhimov was said to by the U.S. Treasury Department to have strong links to organised crime, which led the IOC to launch an inquiry and suspend IBA initially in 2019.

Rakhimov’s successor, Russian Umar Kremlev, is said to have strong links to state President Vladimir Putin while the governing body has been backed by Russian state energy firm Gazprom, which Kremlev said had ceased to be the case since 2023.

Concerns over the integrity of bouts and judging were underlined by report by sports investigator Richard McLaren which said “corruption abounded” when he concluded his report into IBA’s governance.

IBA is also under threat from the newly-formed World Boxing, which was set up by former IBA presidential candidate Boris van der Vorst, who have already held talks with the IOC about leading the boxing at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 2028 and have almost three dozen nations supporting them.

So it’s fair to say that IBA’s credibility continues to be stretched.

Last year, Khelif and fellow boxer Lin Yu-Ting of Taiwan were disqualified from the World Boxing Championships.

“Based on DNA tests, we identified a number of athletes who tried to trick their colleagues into posing as women,” the Association’s president, Umar Kremlev, told Russia’s Tass news agency at the time. “According to the results of the tests, it was proved that they have XY chromosomes. Such athletes were excluded from competition.”

It was a pure coincidence that Khelif had beaten Russian opponent Azalia Amineva in the semi-final, her disqualification ensuring that Amineva’s unbeaten record was restored.

Fast forward to Paris and Khelif, who was born and raised a woman, and does not identify as either transgender or intersex.

The controversy over her inclusion in the women’s 66kg boxing event prompted everyone from author JK Rowling, Tesla billionaire Elon Musk and former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss to pour scorn over Khelif’s inclusion.

Carini, meanwhile, expressed regret over her actions in the ring. "All this controversy makes me sad," Carini told Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport. "I'm sorry for my opponent, too. If the IOC said she can fight, I respect that decision. It wasn't something I intended to do.

"Actually, I want to apologise to her and everyone else. I was angry because my Olympics had gone up in smoke."

The IOC made a statement criticising IBA’s governance and later IOC President Thomas Bach confirmed that the boxers were not transgender.

He confirmed: “We have two boxers who are born as women, who have been raised as women, who have a passport as a woman and have competed for many years as women. Some want to own a definition of who is a women.”

He went on to underline the IOC’s position while referring to the wider and politically motivated campaign by Russian interests against the IOC and the Paris Olympics.

He added: “What we have seen from the Russian side and in particular from the (IBA),” Bach said, “they have undertaken already way before these Games with a defamation campaign against France, against the Games, against the IOC.”

IOC Director of Communications, Mark Adams, dismissed the legitimacy of IBA’s testing and the frenzy it was attempting to capitalise on.

He said: “The whole process is flawed. From the conception of the test, to the way the test was shared with us, to the way the tests were made public, it's so flawed that it's impossible to engage with it.

“I'm not going to discuss the individual intimate details of athletes in public, which I think is quite disgraceful for those who leaked that material. Frankly, it must be terrible to be put in that position. On top of all the social media harassment these athletes have had to endure.”

Despite their lack of involvement from Paris 2024, IBA called a press conference to build upon the controversy and explain why they had banned Khelif from their own event last year.

Given their reputation as an organisation, and despite of the facts as laid out by the IOC, what IBA needed to do was show leadership, authority and professionalism.

That would send a message to the world that they are a serious organisation capable of representing the diverse boxing family and acting with integrity.

What transpired was quite the opposite.

Reporters were kept waiting for the press conference for over an hour amid technical difficulties which were to affect the translations, the live feed to Kremlev in Russia and the sound system.

One reporter described the event as “the most extraordinary, chaotic, shambolic and badly organised international sporting press conference I have ever attended,” and it was perhaps a fatal blow to IBA’s hopes of regaining Olympic Programme control for boxing.

The speakers rambled, avoided answering direct questions and there was no coherent messaging to convince the attendant media that IBA, and by extension its point of view, was credible.

IBA Chief Executive, Chris Roberts, a former British Army officer, revealed that blood tests carried out by a laboratory in Istanbul during the 2022 World Championship came up as inconsistent for Khelif and another boxer, with a similar test the next year leading to her disqualification.

He added that Roberts the controversy “wasn’t anything that we wanted. We delivered the test information to the IOC and they haven’t done anything with it because they believe in their own criteria, which is the passport. We never intended to raise any issues because this is not our event. We are now here because the media has questions.”

Kremlev used the opportunity to attack the IOC and President Bach again, claiming that he was standing up for women’s sport, despite all the speakers being men.

In a rambling tirade that prompted journalists to leave or ask him to stop talking, Kremlev said; “As a Christian, the Olympic opening ceremony was something horrible. Today we are destroying sport, especially feminine sport.

“We have genetic tests showing that these are men. We have not checked what’s between their legs. There are doctors and medics who can verify these things. We don’t know whether they were born like that or changes were made.

"Today we are witnessing the death of women's boxing, the corruption of judges. All this is happening while Mr Bach is president (of the IOC). Under no circumstances should we allow women's boxing to be destroyed. Today not only is women's boxing being destroyed, but I believe that in the future they will also try to destroy women's sport.”

Several journalists and other people who were attending left in disgust, at not just the language, but the tone of the answers from the IBA participants.

Nothing is ever off the record with journalists and it was laughable that Roberts then contradicted his President by confirming that Gazprom was still a sponsor and also undermining the validity of the 2023 tests by saying that there was no independent presence when they took place.

No wonder the IOC’s Mark Adams responded: “It was a chaotic farce. The organization and the content of this press conference tells you everything you need to know about their governance and credibility.

"It clearly demonstrates that the sport of boxing needs a new federation to run boxing. If you ever needed any evidence at all that the IBA is unfit to run boxing just look at the key members of the IBA who took part in that travesty yesterday.

"We would love to see boxing, we want to see boxing on the programme in LA. Now it is up to the boxing community to organise themselves for the sport and for the athletes." 

It wasn’t just Carini who came to Khelif’s defence.

Amy Broadhurst, who competed for Team GB at this summer's Games, recently spoke out on Khelif competing in Paris, having previously fought and beaten the Algerian in the final of the 2022 World Championships.

"Have a lot of people texting me over Imane Khelif," she posted on X. "Personally I don't think she has done anything to 'cheat'. "I thinks it's the way she was born and that's out of her control. The fact that she has been [beaten] by nine females before says it all."

Beyond the confusion, the chaos and the shambles that was IBA’s press conference, not once did any of the speakers show any sympathy for the online bullying and abuse that Khelif has faced.

Khelif (above in red) had earlier said the furore was having “massive effects” as she called for restraint. “I send a message to all the people of the world to uphold the Olympic principles and the Olympic Charter, to refrain from bullying all athletes, because this has effects,” she said.

After winning gold by beating Chinese world champion Yang Liu by a unanimous decision over five rounds to win welterweight gold, Khelif said: “I am fully qualified to take part in this competition. I’m a woman like any other woman.

"For eight years, this has been my dream, and I'm now the Olympic champion and gold medalist. That also gives my success a special taste because of those attacks.

"We are in the Olympics to perform as athletes, and I hope that we will not see any similar attacks in future Olympics.

 “I was born a woman, I lived a woman, I competed as a woman, there’s no doubt about that. [The detractors] are enemies of success, that is what I call them. And that also gives my success a special taste because of these attacks.

“As for the IBA, since 2018 I have been boxing under their umbrella. They know me very well, they know what I’m capable of, they know how I’ve developed over the years but now they are not recognised any more. They hate me and I don’t know why. I send them a single message: with this gold medal, my dignity, my honour is above everything else.”

Paris 2024 will go down as one of the greatest Olympiad of all time, with the Khelif affair a rare controversy which raised questions of fairness and safety. But Khelif has struggled in other competitions, her Olympic gold surely the peak of her career which has never been characterised by overly powerful punching.

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

On Friday, cisgender Algerian female boxer Imane Khelif secured gold in the final match of her weight class, defying far-right critics who have falsely claimed she is “a man.” Despite being assigned female at birth and living her entire life as a woman, Khelif faced a barrage of attacks questioning her gender. However, her participation was met with overwhelming support and cheers as she entered the arena, and ultimately won her match. [...] The match started slowly and seemed evenly balanced, with Khelif narrowly taking the first round. In the second round, however, Khelif dominated, landing decisive blows as the announcers observed that the crowd was “clearly behind her.” By the end of the third round, it was evident that she had won, maintaining her dominance throughout the competition. When the final announcement declared her the winner, the crowd erupted in celebration.

Khelif’s victory comes after she faced intense criticism from far-right activists, major political figures, and opponents of transgender participation in sports. Despite never having transitioned genders, these critics labeled the cisgender female boxer as “a man.” For example, Donald Trump responded to Khelif’s previous win by declaring, “I WILL KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN’S SPORTS!” J.K. Rowling posted a picture of Khelif, stating, “Could any picture sum up our new men’s rights movement better? The smirk of a male who knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s just shattered.” Others joining in include Elon Musk, Riley Gaines, and JD Vance. Disinformation about her gender identity even spread to major outlets, including the Boston Globe, which inaccurately referred to her as transgender. The paper quickly issued a major retraction of the claim.

After Khelif’s previous match, she remained defiant, stating, “I dedicate this medal to the world, and to all the Arabs and I tell you, ‘Long live Algeria! I want to tell the entire world that I am a female, and I will remain a female.” The original claim about Khelif’s sex eligibility arose when the scandal-plagued International Boxing Association (IBA) ruled her out of competition, alleging she failed an unspecified gender test after defeating an undefeated Russian boxer. Notably, the IBA is presided over by Umar Kremlev of Russia, an associate of President Putin. In 2023, the International Olympic Committee voted to derecognize the IBA due to concerns about corruption, governance, and judging controversies.

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

Over the last week, conservative influencer accounts have ignited a firestorm over cisgender boxer Imane Khelif, alleging that she is actually a “man” and suggesting she might be transgender. This is despite officials confirming that Khelif was assigned female at birth and has competed as a woman her entire life. The controversy has led to statements from Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and anti-transgender influencers, who are using the boxer’s participation to target transgender athletes. Now, the Boston Globe, a major American paper, has published and circulated into print the false claim that Khelif is transgender. The title reads, “Transgender Boxer Advances.” The headline was placed on an AP article written by sports journalist Greg Beachem, who asserts, “That's not my headline. That word isn't in my story. My stories are syndicated worldwide, and customers are allowed to write their own headlines.” The use of alternate headlines is a common practice for wire services. The word “transgender” does not appear once in the story, which was printed on August 2, 2024.

There is no evidence that Khelif is a transgender woman. Although transgender women are allowed to compete in the Olympics, there are no openly transgender women competing this year. Meanwhile, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach has confirmed that Khelif is a cisgender boxer, calling disinformation about her gender “totally unacceptable.” Khelif’s family shared pictures of her as a child, as well as identity documents showing her assigned sex at birth. Notably, gender transition is criminalized in Algeria, making it extremely unlikely that transgender people would be allowed to transition in the country.

The original claim about Khelif’s sex eligibility arose when the scandal-plagued International Boxing Association (IBA) ruled her out of competition, alleging she failed an unspecified gender test after defeating an undefeated Russian boxer. Notably, the IBA is presided over by Umar Kremlev of Russia, an associate of President Putin. In 2023, the International Olympic Committee voted to derecognize the IBA due to concerns about corruption, governance, and judging controversies.

[...] Update: The paper has issued a correction and apologized. “A significant error was made in a headline on a story in Friday’s print sports section about Algerian boxer Imane Khelif incorrectly describing her as transgender. She is not. Additionally, our initial correction of this error neglected to note that she was born female. We recognize the magnitude of this mistake and have corrected it in the epaper, the electronic version of the printed Globe. This editing lapse is regretful and unacceptable and we apologize to Khelif, to Associated Press writer Greg Beacham, and to you, our readers.”