With Putin watching, IOC president opens Winter Games with plea to ‘give peace a chance’
February 4, 2022
International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach on Friday urged world leaders to “give peace a chance” at the outset of the Winter Games in Beijing — an apparent nod to the ongoing security crisis along Ukraine’s borders and Western criticism of China’s human rights abuses.
“In our fragile world — where division, conflict and mistrust are on the rise — we show the world, yes, it is possible to be fierce rivals while at the same time living peacefully and respectfully together,” Bach said in an address at the games’ opening ceremony, which was attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“In this Olympic spirit of peace,” Bach added, “I appeal to all political authorities across the world: Observe your commitment to this Olympic truth. Give peace a chance.”
Bach’s remarks come as tensions continue to escalate in Eastern Europe, where Russia has massed roughly 100,000 troops around Ukraine in a military build-up that has sparked concern in the United States and other NATO nations.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday ordered the deployment of roughly 3,000 troops to Poland, Germany and Romania in a show of support to European allies. And the United States warned on Thursday that Russia could create a pretext for an invasion by distributing a fake video of Ukrainian forces targeting Russian territory or Russian-speakers.
On Friday, Putin met with Xi on the sidelines of the Winter Games, and their governments issued a joint statement expressing opposition to the “further enlargement of NATO” — calling on the military alliance to “abandon its ideologized Cold War approaches.”
Putin is one of Xi’s most high-profile guests in Beijing, as several democratic nations have joined the United States’ diplomatic boycott of the Winter Games, citing China’s persecution of ethnic Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region and other human rights abuses.
But in a provocative message to those Western powers, China chose an athlete who it said was of Uyghur heritage to help light the Olympic cauldron and formally kick off the games. Human rights advocates in the United States criticized the move as a shallow gesture meant to diminish complaints about Beijing’s abuses.
“This a desperate attempt in the Chinese government’s ongoing genocide denial to show a kind of normalized, happy face of the Uyghurs,” Nury Turkel, a Uyghur-American senior fellow at The Hudson Institute, told POLITICO. “This kind of public display reflects a [Chinese Communist Party] propaganda project aimed to help them to silence their critics while boosting their apologists around the world.”
Omer Kanat, executive director of the Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project, told POLITICO in a statement that China’s selection of a Uyghur athlete “from a team of hundreds demonstrates how blatantly hypocritical the IOC is when it tells us the Olympics must remain politically neutral. This is unmistakably political.”
“The IOC is not only staying silent while Uyghurs face atrocities, but is actively enabling the Chinese government on day one of the Games,” Kanat said. “Even before the Games officially begin, the Olympics already reek of politics.”
Phelim Kine contributed to this report.
Source: https://www.politico.com/
