The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics began under a number of clouds last week. Covid is still raging, a Chinese Olympic official threatened foreign athletes with legal penalties should they speak out against human-rights abuses, and the Chinese government continues to commit horrific crimes against humanity that once again make a mockery of the world’s “Never Again” vows.
But no matter. Athletes have descended upon Beijing in the thousands, American corporate sponsors have stuck steadfastly by the killers of Kashgar, and NBC is beaming the Chinese Communist Party’s grand propaganda spectacle to millions of homes across America.
These Winter Games are a story of failure — an International Olympic Committee failure, a government failure, a private-sector failure, and a collective-action failure.
In 2014, four of the six initial hopeful host cities for these Olympics withdrew their bids, leaving the Lausanne-headquartered IOC to decide between Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan. Despite China’s refusal to abide by human-rights assurances it had given the IOC ahead of the 2008 Summer Olympics, held in Beijing — dissidents were silenced, officially designated “protest zones” were kept empty, and there was a horrid crackdown in Tibet in the months preceding the opening ceremonies that year — the IOC did not hesitate to award another Olympiad to Beijing.
These Winter Games are a story of failure — an International Olympic Committee failure, a government failure, a private-sector failure, and a collective-action failure.
In 2014, four of the six initial hopeful host cities for these Olympics withdrew their bids, leaving the Lausanne-headquartered IOC to decide between Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan. Despite China’s refusal to abide by human-rights assurances it had given the IOC ahead of the 2008 Summer Olympics, held in Beijing — dissidents were silenced, officially designated “protest zones” were kept empty, and there was a horrid crackdown in Tibet in the months preceding the opening ceremonies that year — the IOC did not hesitate to award another Olympiad to Beijing.
Knowing full well that Chinese human-rights commitments would be meaningless, the IOC did not bother securing any. Nor, as the scale of the genocide in Xinjiang became clear in recent years, did IOC president Thomas Bach even politely suggest that Beijing alter its course. Though he was perhaps uniquely positioned to insist on an unfettered fact-finding trip to the beleaguered region, Bach instead dismissed as mere politics the credible accusations of genocide, sexual violence, torture, and forced labor. READ MORE...
