The right to resist in times of COVID-19: the case of the Belarusian professional football
| Autor | Felipe Augusto Loschi Crisafulli |
| Cargo | Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra - Portugal |
| Páginas | 219-253 |
The right to resist in times of COVID-19:
the case of the Belarusian professional
football
O direito de resistência em tempos de COVID-19:
o caso do futebol prossional bielorrusso
Felipe Augusto Loschi Crisafulli*
Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra – Portugal
1. Introduction
Breaking news! Breaking news! The world has (almost) stopped. From schools to
clubs. From buses to airplanes. From offices to gyms. From mosques to parties.
No transit of people allowed, except for health reasons or those related to essen-
tial services.
Were it not for the avalanche of news that pours in from all direc-
tions regarding the new coronavirus disease (COVID-2019/SARS-CoV-2),
an undiscerning observer could read the paragraph above and think it
explains an era of a severe armed conflict, for example, the First or the
Second World War periods.
But it is not. As pretty much everyone is currently aware, the world
is experiencing a new “once-in-100-year type event” (these words were
spelled by the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, at a news con-
ference in mid-March 2020), like the cholera pandemic (1800’s) and the
* Visiting lecturer at Escola Mineira de Direito and Futebol Interativo; Ph.D. Law candidate,
Faculdade de Direito, Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal; Master of Laws in Legal
and Political Sciences, mention in Constitutional Law, Universidade de Coimbra; Bachelor of
Laws, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro – PUC-Rio; Member of the Comissão
Especial de Direito Desportivo - OAB/SP; Member of the Instituto Brasileiro de Direito Despor-
tivo – IBDD; Lawyer. Email: felipe.crisafulli@gmail.com.
Direito, Estado e Sociedade n.58 p. 219 a 253 jan/jun 2021
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Direito, Estado e Sociedade n. 58 jan/jun 2021
Spanish flu (1900’s) – without mentioning others, such as the Black Death
(1300’s).
It shall be said: in those cases, to a greater or lesser degree, the world
has also stopped, paralysing businesses and/or non-essential activities. The
difference, however, from the past to today is that, back then, the global-
isation, viz., the process that made the world economy more connected
and interdependent, intensifying worldwide social relations through the
link of “distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by
events occurring many thousands of miles away and vice versa”1, was just
a conception for the (future) modern days.
The countries, until the beginning of the twentieth century, were not
so integrated in terms of organisations, transportations, connections, com-
munications, policymaking in general, industrial or commodities produc-
tion and trade: “globalization was not achieved in the pre-modern period,
even if there were globalizing processes then. It was placed before the post-
modern era. The foundations of worldwide interdependency were estab-
lished in the era of modernity”2.
By the way, it has to be noted: albeit they are commonly seen as syn-
onyms and interchangeable, globalisation shall not be understood (exclu-
sively) as internationalisation, liberalisation, universalisation or even West-
ernisation. Actually, if it was just those things, there would not be necessary
a new word to identify such situation, namely taking into account it is a
terminology that has gained prominence across continents3.
So, whether internationalisation is bound to the increase of transactions
and interdependencies of the countries (from messages to pollutants or
from investments to merchandise), liberalisation refers to an open world,
with less borders (no constraints on movements of resources among coun-
tries, such as trade barriers, capital controls, visa checks or requirements),
universalisation means an everywhere or worldwide dispersion of experi-
ences (cultures, politics, legislations, economics, the Gregorian calendar)
and objects (vehicles, outfit, toys, beverages, tobacco) and Westernisation
symbolises a specific part of universalisation, i.e., the expansion of social
structures of modernity over humanity (e.g., industrialism, capitalism, ra-
1 GIDDENS, 1991, p. 71.
2 MARTELL, 2010, p. 66.
3 SCHOLTE, 2005, p. 51.
Felipe Augusto Loschi Crisafulli
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Direito, Estado e Sociedade n. 58 jan/jun 2021
tionalism, individualism, urbanism) and destruction of local cultures and
autonomy, none of them is exactly new or identical to globalisation itself,
i.e., they already existed before the globalisation period really started or
present notorious differences (e.g., globalisation does not presuppose or
necessarily opposite to laissez-faire economics)4.
In fact, the sense in which the term globalisation was used above is
closer to spatiality. The latter is related to the arena of human being ac-
tions and experiences and identifies the whole planet as a place for societal
relations, through the reductions of borders and barriers to transworld
social contacts, in physical, linguistical, psychological, cultural or legal
ways, towards one world. This is what mainly distinguishes the current
moment from its predecessors, i.e., long-distance connectivity has accom-
panied human history for centuries, but its spread and supraterritoriality
characteristic are clear distinctive contemporary aspects5. After all, should
globalisation mean any, but just, those other concepts, like universality or
integration, it would have “not been achieved, and may well never be”6.
Further, notwithstanding the fact that the science – specifically, the
medicine – does not advance in leaps and bounds, on behalf of the ap-
pearance of a few geniuses, but much more ordinary, with building knowl-
edge assets over time, since “[o]ne discovery leads to another in slow suc-
cession, and new understandings fade into existence”7, there were several
milestones in the past 100 years, from which medicine changed radically
and sometimes rapidly.
So, if last time when the world stopped it was, primarily, as a conse-
quence of hundreds or thousands of citizens deaths already happened, this
time it is being carried out as a preceding step, i.e., it aims to prevent in-
numerable deaths across the globe. Although it is true prevention is better
than cure, such kind of acting is far more difficult than in the shadow of a
disaster or emergency.
4 SCHOLTE, 2005, pp. 54-59.
5 SCHOLTE, 2005, pp. 60-86.
6 MARTELL, 2010, p. 66.
7 SALEH, 2019.
The right to resist in times of COVID-19:
the case of the Belarusian professional football
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