As the Beijing Olympics formally open Friday with the IOC accused of collaborating with China’s Communist government in suppressing human rights.
At the center of the Olympic Village at every Winter Games since Turin in 2006 the International Olympic Committee has erected truce murals for the world’s athletes to sign.
“Over the coming days, you will compete fiercely against one another,” Bach said in a speech Tuesday. “At the same time, you will be living together peacefully and respectfully under one roof, in the Olympic Village. In this way, you will show us what the world can look like if we all respect the same rules and each other. This is the true Olympic spirit. This is the message of the Olympic Games: bringing the world together in peaceful competition.
“Olympic ideals and Olympic values and this rhetoric is totally groundless,” said Helen Jefferson Lenskyj, a University of Toronto professor and author of “The Olympic Games: A Critical Approach.” “It’s mere Olympic industry propaganda fundamentally. The IOC executive board announced in December 2018 it was forming an advisory committee on human rights chaired by Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein of Jordan, the former United Nations high commissioner for human rights. The full committee was to be announced in March 2019.
“They have a PR policy right now,” Derick Hulme, a political science professor at Alma College, said of the IOC. “The IOC has never elevated human rights to a meaningful position in the movement and it’s not been something that has driven policy. They’ve had to accommodate where they have felt necessary. If we go back and think about the IOC’s treatment of human rights issues going back decades and decades and decades, the IOC has never, ever been about advancing human rights.
“I think there’s increasing awareness that it’s just about sport and it’s not about promoting beautiful values around the world, about promoting unity and harmony,” Lenskyj said. “The sporting spectacle is a vehicle for the sponsors to bring their product to every corner of the world and China is certainly a prime market for that sort of thing. That was motivation to awarding the 2008 Games to Beijing.
In announcing the Biden administration’s diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Games, White House press secretary Jen Psaki recently cited China’s “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.” But it is not only the rights of the Uyghurs and dissidents that athletes, sports officials and human rights activists are concerned about during the Games.Yang Shu’an, the Beijing 2022 vice president who signed the Olympic Truce Mural with Bach Tuesday, recently told reporters Olympic athletes’ statements and behavior would only “be protected” if they were “in line with the Olympic spirit.” Athletes doing anything “against Chinese laws and regulations” would be held “accountable,” Yang said.
“We’re very concerned for the simple reason that the two entities that are there to protect athletes are threatening to punish them and that’s been proven by the foreign minister of China indicating that any country that boycotts will be punished and then shortly or earlier one of the heads of Beijing 2022 organizing committee came out and said that any athlete that speaks out against or speaks out … be subject to punishment,” said Rob Koehler, director general of Global Athlete, a...
Peng, 35, a former Wimbledon and French Open champion, on November 2 accused Zhang Gaoli, the former vice premier of the Chinese Communist Party, of sexual assaulting her. She also said she a had a years-long affair with Zhang. “She explained that she is safe and well, living at her home in Beijing, but would like to have her privacy respected at this time,” the IOC said in a statement. “That is why she prefers to spend her time with friends and family right now. Nevertheless, she will continue to be involved in tennis, the sport she loves so much.”
“There are different ways to achieve her well-being and safety. We have taken a very human and person-centered approach to her situation,” the IOC said in a statement. “Since she is a three-time Olympian, the IOC is addressing these concerns directly with Chinese sports organizations.
“The IOC cites ‘quiet diplomacy’ working behind the scenes in its dealing with the Chinese or the Putin government in 2014,” Richardson said. “Do you see any indication that this approach has led to any significant movement by the Chinese government in terms of human rights?
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