[Race] Bahrain (Updated)

[Louis Agilais]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

As if anymore needed to be said:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/form...e/13718417.stm

it's great news. now it's time to continue on this path and refuse to go there while they don't reform the political system and implant democracy. And then comes China turn.

[Marbot]

Originally Posted by Louis Agilais

And then comes China turn.

If we go down the road of not having GPs in countries that have dodgy human rights records, then it's going to be a pretty short GP calendar!

As much as I deplore what is going on in China, even countries like the US have also not been totally innocent in this respect. Where is the line drawn when it comes to what is and isn't acceptable for a country to be able to hold a GP race with regard to human rights?

[Bononi]

Originally Posted by Louis Agilais

And then comes China turn.

Wow, that's something to be seen !

[Louis Agilais]

Originally Posted by Marbot

If we go down the road of not having GPs in countries that have dodgy human rights records, then it's going to be a pretty short GP calendar!

As much as I deplore what is going on in China, even countries like the US have also not been totally innocent in this respect. Where is the line drawn when it comes to what is and isn't acceptable for a country to be able to hold a GP race with regard to human rights?

Of course it's never easy to draw that line and anyone who does it is taking the chance of being unfair by putting some countries in that list while leaving others out.
Personally I think the most flagrant cases are the ones we should care about (and bar their GP). As to how to do that, how to answer what constitutes a flagrant human rights violation and what does not, the best way is to resort to the United Nations and the Reports it does annually on the subject of Human Rights Violations (usually the countries are graded according to the degree and number of violations) and/or resort to the Non-Governmental Organizations that also study and publish reports on the matter. Both the UN and NGO's are impartial and use reliable scientific methods for their studies, their results are not contested and have the most credibility.

And I do agree with you about the U.S. Although they resorted to other countries territories for their most brutal violations, that doesn't excuse them: those violations count for U.S.A.. But things have changed in the last few years and that is already shown on the UN reports.

[Peter Mallett]

Originally Posted by Louis Agilais

Of course it's never easy to draw that line and anyone who does it is taking the chance of being unfair by putting some countries in that list while leaving others out.

This is the point that Maurice Hamilton raised in the Canadian GP coverage today. F1 can't get involved in politics. It can say somewhere is too dangerous but it can't dictate who is good enough to hold a GP.

Of course whether one considers South Korea dangerous due to its geography, is another matter.