Opinion | Will the next Olympics be a celebration of dictatorship and genocide? - The Washington Post

Well, that was — something. Much about the Games of the XXXII Olympiad, “Tokyo 2020” for short, was exciting (Allyson Felix’s rise as Team USA’s most decorated track athlete ever), astonishing (unheralded U.S.-born Italian Lamont Marcell Jacobs’s win in the men’s 100-meter dash) or courageous (Simone Biles’s decision to put mental and physical health ahead of pursuing more gold). Some was outrageous (Belarus’s attempt to forcibly repatriate an athlete who protested her home country’s dictatorship). And a great deal (empty venues; the “2020” designation for an event occurring in 2021) was downright strange. The emptiness was oddly appropriate for a spectacle postponed a year because of the coronavirus pandemic — and held despite lingering public health concerns.

One of our favorite moments came during the Opening Ceremonies on July 23, but not because of the kitschy display before a handful of dignitaries and thousands of unoccupied seats. Rather, we admired the hundreds of Japanese protesters outside Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium, peacefully expressing their view, apparently shared by a majority of their compatriots, that Japan’s government and the International Olympic Committee should not have pressed on with the Games amid a global pandemic. Agree or disagree, the protests — and the fact that official tolerance was never in question — epitomized democracy and freedom in East Asia’s second-largest nation.

No open dissent should be expected at the Olympic “movement’s” next scheduled gathering: the Winter Games in Beijing, which begin Feb. 4, 2022. That is not because China’s people are entirely satisfied with Communist Party rule. To the contrary, the ruling party is stifling discontent through ferocious repression. Beijing stands credibly accused of genocide against its Muslim Uyghur population and is intensifying a crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong, while adopting an ever more menacing military posture toward Taiwan. The Chinese government has stonewalled investigations into the origins of covid-19 itself.

Weird as the spectacle in Tokyo might, at times, have been, skiing, snowboarding and ice dancing across China while the dictatorship tightens its grip, and millions suffer, would be grotesque. Yet that is what participating nations, the IOC and the Games’ corporate sponsors seem to have in mind. They all dismiss the boycott that human rights groups seek as either inappropriate or futile.

To be sure, a boycott would probably not change China’s behavior, while athletes who have worked their whole lives for a shot at Olympic gold would pay a heavy price. But if there is to be no boycott, then countries and companies must deny China the unchallenged showcase it craves. The United States and its fellow democracies should devise appropriate condemnations and time for them at the Olympics. As for the private sector, U.S. companies can speak up when they choose to do so, as many showed by their support of voting rights and opposition to anti-transgender legislation in this country; they should neither support nor celebrate an event in a country committing crimes against humanity. The United States and other media — the Games’ official broadcaster, NBC, very much included — must insist on covering the whole truth about China, and not just feel-good Olympics stories, while they are in the country. And athletes, too, have a responsibility to show solidarity with China’s oppressed, as we hope and expect many will do, before, during and after the medal ceremonies.

No government, company or individual should be complicit in the glorification of the Chinese regime’s crimes.

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August 10, 2021 at 05:20AM
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Opinion | Will the next Olympics be a celebration of dictatorship and genocide? - The Washington Post
"Opinion" - Google News
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