Using a token minority athlete as a cynical tactic to silence critics of their human rights abuses, failed miserably.
The International Olympic Committee has admitted that it is responsible for the removal of a viral video from Twitter that showed an Uyghur athlete lighting the Olympic flame.
The clip shared by Mediaite’s Jason Rickman included comments from NBC’s Savannah Guthrie putting the incident in its political context.
Twitter passed the buck when questioned, saying that the video was “disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner,” according to the Washington Examiner.
The IOC then fessed up, indicating that what might seem to some like censorship was simply good business.
“As the clip contained audiovisual content from the Olympic Games, it contravened the exclusive rights that the IOC has granted to Rights Holding Broadcasters, and therefore was subject to an automated takedown procedure,” an IOC spokesman said.
Copyright, my ass. The Olympic Committee doesn’t like the uncomfortable truth about ChiCom atrocities.
“This moment is quite provocative,” Guthrie said during the now-deleted clip. “It’s a statement from the Chinese President Xi Jinping to choose an athlete from the Uyghur minority. It is an in-your-face response to those Western nations, including the U.S., who have called this Chinese treatment of that group genocide and diplomatically boycotted these games. There will be much discussion about this.”
……Some commentators said the Olympic Committee does not want to know the truth.
“The IOC knows the Chinese authorities are arbitrarily detaining Uyghurs and other Muslims, expanding state surveillance, and silencing numerous peaceful critics,” said Sophie Richardson, Human Rights Watch’s China director, Axios reported.
“Its failure to publicly confront Beijing’s serious human rights violations makes a mockery of its own commitments and claims that the Olympics are a ‘force for good,’” she said.
“The IOC has never elevated human rights to a meaningful position in the movement, and it’s not been something that has driven policy,” said Derick Hulme, a political science professor at Alma College, according to The Orange County Register.
“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. It’s been about advancing the interest of the IOC,” he continued.
The IOC is not politically neutral. It serves at the whim of totalitarian regimes for profit and publicity.
The IOC is now clearly on the side of the autocratic regimes. It’s one thing for the IOC to fail to stand up for de facto hostage Peng Shuai; we’re used to such cowardice. But it’s another thing for the IOC to voluntarily participate in the propaganda effort, as our Maddy Kearns reports:
“In Beijing, Peng Shuai, the Chinese tennis player, gave an interview with the French sports newspaper L’Equipe while a Chinese Olympic official stood nearby. When asked about her sexual assault allegations against a former high-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party, Shuai said that international concerns about her safety and whereabouts had been “an enormous misunderstanding.”
Shuai also had a face-to-face meeting with the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, which no doubt is supposed to alleviate international concern for the tennis star. When asked whether or not the IOC believes Peng’s speech is being controlled, the IOC spokesman told the press conference that while they were pursuing “personal and quiet diplomacy,” “It’s [not] for us to be able to judge, in one way, just as it’s not for you to judge either.”
How can you feel good about the Olympics after reading something like that?
NBC’s Genocide Games are a dismal flop. Turns out, no one wants to watch a showcase of ChiCom propaganda.