A senior International Olympic Committee (IOC) official told the Chinese propaganda newspaper Global Times in an interview on Tuesday that the Communist Party leadership had prepared for the Winter Olympics, beginning this week, “extraordinarily” and that the event would be an “extraordinary party.”
The 2022 Beijing Olympics are set to begin Friday after years of protests and outrage that a country actively committing genocide was granted the honor of hosting the event. The IOC has soundly ignored the protests – led by members of the communities the Chinese government persecutes – as have the governments of participating nations.
In addition to concerns that China will use the Olympics to elevate its international profile while engaging in the genocide of the Uyghur people of East Turkistan, critics of the Olympics have noted that Beijing is currently enduring a massive outbreak of Chinese coronavirus, jeopardizing the safety of athletes and staff. Critics are also concerned that Chinese government officials have threatened to enforce the nation’s repressive speech laws against anyone, including athletes, who stand up for human rights.
“Any expression that is in line with the Olympic spirit I’m sure will be protected and anything and any behavior or speeches that is against the Olympic spirit, especially against Chinese laws and regulations, are also subject to certain punishment,” Yang Shu, the deputy director-general of Beijing 2022’s International Relations Department, said in January.
At least two American athletes, snowboarder Shaun White and figure skater Timothy LeDuc, have said or committed actions that may violate Chinese law by supporting repressed minority populations in the country.
Juan Antonio Samaranch, chairman of the IOC Coordination Commission for Beijing 2022, in his interview with the Global Times, expressed only positive sentiments about the event, congratulating the Communist Party for its efforts.
“We have seen with great satisfaction how the organizing committee has prepared everything extraordinarily. We are extremely confident. We are very happy with how things are going,” Samaranch reportedly told the state-run news outlet. “I’m amazed and impressed by the quality of what I’ve seen.”
Samaranch described the Olympics as “an extraordinary party for everybody that we are going to be able to be there and certainly very inspirational for the rest of the world.”
Simmering concerns about Beijing’s poor handling of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic have grown in the past week along with the rates of coronavirus infection in the capital. On Sunday, Chinese officials admitted that their “closed-loop” Olympics system – which bans anyone working at the event from leaving the Olympic village “bubble” area, had failed to keep athletes and staffers from being infected. According to Reuters, 119 people tested positive for Chinese coronavirus within the “closed loop” since the government closed it. Officials diagnosed 37 cases on Sunday, including several athletes who now will not be able to compete in the Games.
“The closed-loop is working, is safe. Probably the safest place on earth today,” Samaranch told the state newspaper in Monday’s interview, contradicting the data coming out of the location.
The IOC official also dismissed the “diplomatic boycott” efforts organized by the United States and a small group of other countries in repudiation of China’s human rights atrocities.
“The truth of the matter is that it has zero effect on the quality of the Games,” he said.
A “diplomatic boycott” is not a boycott of the Olympics, as Samaranch observed, because diplomats do not compete in Olympic sports. The effort is one in which politicians abstain from attending the event in an attempt at a symbolic gesture for human rights. Even this paltry effort has failed, however, as President Joe Biden’s administration admitted to applying for visas for diplomats less than a month after announcing the “diplomatic boycott.”
According to the Global Times, at least 32 “foreign heads of state, heads of government, members of royal families and heads of international organizations will attend the Games.”
The IOC has loudly refused to address any concerns regarding China’s human rights abuses. In addition to granting China hosting duties, it has defended China from accusations of abuse, most notably following the disappearance of tennis champion Peng Shuai. Before her disappearance in November, Peng, a former Olympian, accused the former head of China’s Olympic Committee, Zhang Gaoli, of raping her. IOC President Thomas Bach denied reports that she was missing, and the IOC published an image allegedly showing Bach engaging in a video call with her.
“At the beginning of the 30-minute call, Peng Shuai thanked the IOC for its concern about her well-being. 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.”
Bach has promised to personally meet with Peng in Beijing, and the IOC has claimed to host numerous conversations with Peng since the alleged video call, though never addressing the accusations that prompted her vanishing from the public eye. Peng has since abruptly denied that she ever wrote that Zhang raped her, without explaining the now-deleted post on her Chinese social media account.
The IOC has also teamed up with two Chinese companies implicated in the use of slave labor to manufacture uniforms for the 2022 Games, while claiming to have no indication of the use of slave labor anywhere in the supply chains where the uniforms come from.
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