IOC must no longer ignore China’s abuses

The International Olympic Committee is learning the hard way that unresolved problems always return.

By not holding China to account for human rights abuses in both the leadup to and during the Beijing Games in 2008, the IOC effectively told the host nation it could do whatever it wanted without fear of repercussions. It should come as no surprise, then, that China is again committing atrocities despite the Winter Games in Beijing being 18 months away.

China has taken measures to strip Hong Kong of what autonomy it has left and has beaten and jailed those who dissent. Its treatment of the Uighur population is even more abhorrent. Videos surfaced last week of hundreds of Uighur men, blindfolded and bound and with their heads shaved, being led onto trains, presumably to be transported to a re-education camp.

There also are reports of forced sterilization and abortion as part of the statesponsored effort to get the Uighurs, an ethnically Muslim group, to assimilate.

“We have their guarantees there of the Chinese partners and all the signatories of the host city contract that whatever is related to the Olympic Games will respect the human rights,” IOC President Thomas Bach said last week when asked what was being done about China’s latest abuses.

“We are fully confident that China will deliver on this commitment with regard to the organization of the Winter Olympic Games.”

In other words, the IOC will try to avert its eyes to China’s human rights abuses so long as it doesn’t interfere with or intrude upon its big party.

Good luck with that. Besides the other abuses of Uighurs, The New York Times reported last weekend that it has found personal protective equipment being manufactured by companies in Xinjiang that use forced labor. Who’s to say they’re not making those cute, cuddly Olympic mascots, too?

Don’t forget about crackdowns on press freedom and internet restrictions, too. And what happens if an Olympic athlete criticizes the crackdown in Hong Kong during the Games?

“This is a perfect storm of human rights abuses that are happening in China,” said Minky Worden, director of global initiatives for Human Rights Watch. “The collision with the IOC is inevitable.”

The IOC talks a good game about the

Olympics being a beacon for tolerance and fairness. It has worked with the United Nations to champion the “Olympic ideal” of peace and equality through sport and has used the Games to foster cooperation among squabbling nations. It will even come down hard on countries that actively discriminate against their own people – so long as they’re bit players in the Olympic movement.

South Africa was banned from the Olympics for nearly 30 years because of apartheid. Afghanistan missed the Sydney Olympics because of the Taliban’s repressive policies against women. The IOC effectively forced South Korea to enact democratic reforms, including free elections, by threatening to take away the Seoul Olympics.

But heaven forbid the IOC take a similar tough stance against China, which has become a major player in the Olympic movement. It will host two Games in 14 years, including a Winter Games in 2022 that nobody in Europe wanted. Alibaba Group, the Chinese tech giant, is now one of the IOC’s major sponsors.

So good luck getting the IOC to raise an eyebrow, let alone its voice, about Hong Kong’s democratic traditions being destroyed, Uighur people being brutalized or the Chinese government sponsoring cyberattacks that threaten nations’ security. There’s a Winter Olympics to be had!

“The IOC will have to assess its own tolerance for human rights risk in China,” Worden said. “The 2008 Olympics were already legendary for human rights abuses. The current situation is leagues worse.”

The IOC is hardly alone in letting China’s human rights abuses go unchecked. Last month, 47 UN independent experts urged “the international community to act collectively and decisively to ensure China respects human rights and abides by its international obligations.”

But the IOC has more influence with China than almost anyone.

Hosting an Olympics is a source of immense pride for China, proof of its power, status and wealth. Being stripped of the Games would be an epic humiliation that would forever stain President Xi Jinping’s legacy, and even the threat of that might be enough to force China to curtail its abuses.

“I believe it is the single point of pressure on Xi Jinping’s China that is meaningful,” Worden said. “All the other points have been tossed away.”

Maybe threats by the IOC and Bach wouldn’t make a difference. But given the stakes in Hong Kong and for the Uighur people, it’s worth a try.

The Olympics are supposed to celebrate humanity’s best version of itself. Allowing China to go unchecked – again – betrays that.