Danish politicians criticize Caroline Wozniacki for a game with Lukashenka

Front pages of leading Danish newspapers have unexpectedly started discussing the game between Caroline Wozniacki and Victoria Azaranka with Aliaksandr Lukashenka, which took place back in November. This has event has become known in Denmark just recently, after a publication of one of the Danish journalists.

A spokesman of the Danish Liberal Party Michael Aastrup sharply criticized the world number one tennis player for a “tribute to a dictator” which she gave him by playing a tennis game with him.

"Caroline Wozniacki played with a brutal dictator, who is guilty of several deaths, as if he was her best friend. It is not easy for the Belarusians to fight for democracy when their dictator gets noticed with international celebrities", the politician has said.

Another Danish politician Kamal Qureshi, the spokesman of the Socialist People’s Party on human rights issues, even demanded that the Danish Tennis Federation should “reprimand” Wozniacki.

The tennis player’s manager Mikkel Nissen said that Caroline Wozniacki did not know that the game would be used for propagandistic aims.

“Pictures with Aliaksandr Lukashenka were used in the electoral campaign without her knowledge or consent. Caroline participated in the charity action because of her kind heart, in this case – to help sick children", he claimed.

Danish conservators defended the world number one player. The spokesperson of the Conservative Party Carina Christensen: "Stop this slanderous campaign against Caroline Wozniacki, she’s a 19-year-old girl. Don’t mix sport and politics. She is a professional tennis player and she is not obliged to run around asking some people which events she should take part in, and which she should not".

Wozniacki had to comment upon this scandal story. She said she had gone there exclusively to collect money for sick children, that she would not mix sport and politics and would participate in charity events further on.

Let us remind you, the world number one tennis player, a Dane Caroline Wozniacki and a Belarusian Victoria Azaranka conducted a charitable tennis game to collect money for the children’s cancer detection center on November 20, 2010, a month before the presidential election. During the game, the players pulled Aliaksandr Lukashenka out of the audience, right to the court, and played tennis with him for a couple of minutes.

The event was broadly covered by the state media and turned into a big PR-action of one of the presidential candidates.

In the photo: Wozniacki and Azaranka playing with Lukashenka. Screen-shot from STV TV-Channel report.