On 21 July, a court in the United Arab Emirates sentenced a total of 57 Bangladeshis to prison terms for street protests in the Persian Gulf country, including three lifelong jails. These manifestations had apparently been completely peaceful, and their cause could be but the following: In Bangladesh, the native people of the Protestants, demonstrations were taking place in protest against the quota system which coincided with demonstrations against the brutal repression they suffered.

In the diaspora of Italy, France, Canada, Qatar or Maldives there have also been such protests, but nowhere else has the terrible US sanction been affected. Perhaps because that, sowing terror, would be the main cause of the ruthless repression: the Emirates is a country in which almost nine out of ten people have foreign workers, many of them from Bangladesh and without any rights. And surely, more than any sympathy with the Dhaka Government would have been able to shake the strength of the power of Mohamed bin Zayed.

However, the news barely echoed in the international media, neither then nor in the days that followed. And on July 21, the Emirate brought to the foreground something very different. The leader of the UAE Team Emirates, Tadej Pogacar, won the 11th day of the Endesa League of France. The Tour, beating brands and leaving open many cycling enthusiasts, most of them.

It would be a negligence to say that the prowess of Pogacar and of the bars are the reverse of the injustice against the Bangladeshi workers. But it also has to be a bit blind (or far removed from the world of sport) to not realize that the Emirates is one of the regimes that most worship, and more effective, do the sportwashing than almost any other. It is so effective that there is little mention in the more or less serious work that has been done specifically for this purpose.

This cloud of smoke has to do with the role that the Emirates are playing, especially in the last two decades in the Arab geopolitical world. Libya, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, SOMALIA -- it is difficult to find a crisis of direct and silent intervention by the Emirates in that environment and time. Much more than the size of the country would allow, but what its wealth and interests, and the arsenal, make sense. The civil war in Sudan, together with that in Chad, is the most recent.

Its reverse is the sportwashing.