Olympic chiefs tried to distance themselves from a Chinese official’s claim that reports of massive human rights abuses in the province of Xinjiang were just “lies”—but without saying anything that might actually offend their hosts at the Beijing Winter Games.
A Chinese foreign ministry official serving as the spokeswoman for Beijing 2022, Yan Jiarong, blew up the careful facade of political neutrality at the Olympics on Thursday when she used a joint press conference with the IOC to launch into political diatribes.
In a jaw-dropping performance, Yan repeatedly interrupted as reporters asked IOC spokesman Mark Adams about the repression of Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang province, and whether Taiwan had been coerced into participating in the opening and closing ceremonies in Beijing.
ADVERTISEMENT
“We take a solemn position,” she declared. “There is only one China in the world. Taiwan is an indivisible part of China, it is a well-recognized international principle. We are always against the idea of politicizing the Olympic Games.”
That, of course, was exactly what she had done—and human rights campaigners were quick to attack the IOC for letting China get away with it.
“The IOC comes out looking absurd, pathetic and denialist,” Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, told the InsideTheGames website. “Yesterday’s press conference told us everything we needed to know.”
More than a dozen nations have joined an American-led “diplomatic boycott” of the Beijing Games to protest what the U.S. State Department calls a genocidal campaign of repression against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, a northwestern Chinese province.
The IOC always portrays itself and the Olympics as above politics and world sport as a force for peace. Asked about Yan’s comments, IOC President Thomas Bach told a news conference on Friday that the IOC had not ignored the issue. “We were in touch with [Beijing organizing committee] Bocog immediately after this press conference,” he said. “And then both organizations, Bocog and the IOC, have restated the unequivocal commitment to remain politically neutral, as it is required by the Olympic Charter.”
For the New York Times, Bach’s statement amounted to “a rare and surprising rebuke of a Chinese Olympic official.” That might be about right for those practiced in the art of decoding IOC-speak, but his words could equally be understood as saying, “We’ve discussed the problem with our Chinese friends, and agreed that there isn’t actually a problem.”
The contrast between Yan’s strident declarations from the press center podium and the treatment of athletes in Beijing, who were warned they would be punished for saying anything political in China, is striking. Journalists, too, have complained of censorship and rough handling by Olympic staff interrupting their reporting from Beijing.
The only athlete who has taken a public stand on human rights during the Olympics is Nils van der Poel, the double speed skating gold medalist—although he waited until he had returned home to Sweden before telling reporters: “It was extremely irresponsible to award the Games to a country that violates human rights as blatantly as the Chinese Government is doing.”
Human Rights Watch researcher Yaqiu Wang told InsideTheGames that China’s hosting of its second Olympics had cemented rather than discouraged human rights abuses. She said Beijing’s decision to choose a young Uyghur skier to light the Olympic cauldron at the opening ceremony in the Bird's Nest stadium was “like a middle finger to the rest of the world.”
It was, she added, “as if the Nazis chosen a Jewish athlete to light the cauldron in 1936”—when Adolf Hitler welcomed the Olympics to Berlin, in what must still rank as the lowest point in IOC history.
