![]() He added: “Given the diverse participation in the Olympic Games, the IOC has to remain neutral. It is the responsibility of others-the United Nations, who have been very supportive of the Olympic Games, and governments to deal with this - and not for us.” “Our responsibility is to deliver the Games,” said Mark Adams, the IOC’s spokesman. He also addressed world leaders in 2019 in a G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. IOC President Thomas Bach touted his efforts to bring the two Koreas together during the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The IOC says its focus is only sports, though it’s a highly political body with an observer seat at the United Nations. The difference is how the hosts handle it.” ![]() “All hosts have to deal with this witness all of the scrutiny over COVID pre-Tokyo. “They want all the glory and attention of hosting the world for the Winter Games, but they want none of the inevitable criticism that comes with the media magnifying glass,” Cha said. Cha surveyed the politics of sports in Asia and the 2008 Beijing Olympics in his book “Beyond the Final Score.” He also served from 2004-2007 in the Bush White House as director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council. “It’s what I refer to as the Olympics Catch-22 for illiberal regimes like China,” Victor Cha, an Asian specialist at Georgetown University, wrote in an email to AP. Other sponsors including Coca-Cola, Visa, Procter & Gamble, and Airbnb appeared in a congressional hearing but wouldn’t answer most questions directly. State Department assessment that said China was committing genocide against Uighurs and other minorities in Xinjiang. Last week a vice president of Intel, one of the IOC’s top 15 sponsors, said he agreed with a U.S. China is accused by some foreign governments and researchers of imposing forced labor, systematic forced birth control and torture upon Uighurs, a largely Muslim ethnic group Xinjiang, a region in the country’s west.Ĭhina has denied committing genocide against the Uighur people, calling such accusations “the lie of the century.” The IOC has declined several recent demands to move the Olympics out of Beijing. The choice elicited sharp criticism from human rights groups, which continues. The IOC was left with only two candidates: Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan.īeijing won by four votes, 44-40. The organization added that staff from the BBC and the Los Angeles Times “received death threats and intimidating messages and calls.” This came after China last year expelled more than a dozen American reporters working for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.īeijing was the IOC’s unlikely choice for the 2022 Winter Olympics, a decision made in 2015 chiefly because European favorites like Oslo and Stockholm pulled out for financial or political reasons. In a statement, The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China said the “rhetoric from organizations affiliated with China’s ruling Community Party directly endangers the physical safety of foreign journalists in China and hinders free reporting.” That expanded into broader accusations against foreign reporters for “slandering” China with coverage that could be seen as critical rather than focusing on government rescue efforts. The Communist Youth League, an arm of the Chinese Communist Party, asked social media followers to locate and report a BBC reporter on assignment. The peril for journalists was evident last week when foreign reporters covering floods in central China were targeted. “So, do I think China is going to go after anyone, including sports reporters during the Olympics, that deviate from the ‘acceptable’ script? Yes, I absolutely do.”Ĭhina’s foreign ministry has repeatedly criticized the “politicization of sports” and has said any Olympic boycott is “doomed to failure.” It has not addressed journalism during the Games specifically. “It demands this from governments, but also corporations, media, and individuals,” she said in an email. “China demands complete adherence to its position on a number of issues,” Oriana Skylar Mastro, who researches China security issues at Stanford University, told The Associated Press. They could face harassment and threats if portrayals are deemed by the government-and the increasingly nationalist public-to be giving a negative view of China. But reporters from other countries who puncture the PR skin to explore other aspects of life in China-as they have in Japan during the Tokyo Olympics-could draw more than criticism. This will be the mantra, as it always is, when the Beijing Winter Games open in six months.Ĭovering ski races or figure-skating finals should be painless just stay in the sports bubble and out of trouble. ![]() The IOC says the Olympics are only about the sports no politics allowed.
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