This Thursday, thousands of athletes from more than 100 nations will arrive in Beijing to participate in the Winter Olympiad, a made-for-TV spectacular.
In 2011, NBC agreed to a $4.38 billion contract with the International Olympic Committee to broadcast the Olympics through the 2020 games, the most expensive television rights deal in Olympic history. NBC then agreed to a $7.75 billion contract extension in 2014, to air the games through 2032.
Over the fortnight during which the games are played, the spectacle will be watched by more than a billion-and-a-half people at one time or another, including an unknown number of Uyghur Muslims. The significance of carrying on with the games at this point in the history of the Uyghurs is that China is seeking to destroy their culture, their way of life, and their religion in the name of conforming to the Communist ideology.
In December, an independent tribunal found the People’s Republic of China guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, of committing crimes of torture, crimes against humanity, and genocide against the Uyghur people.
The U.S. State Department has also condemned the PRC, accusing them of “arbitrary or unlawful killings by the government; forced disappearances by the government; torture by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison and detention conditions; arbitrary detention by the government, including the mass detention of more than one million Uyghurs and other members of predominantly Muslim minority groups in extrajudicial internment camps and an additional two million subjected to daytime-only ‘re-education’ training; … arbitrary interference with privacy; pervasive and intrusive technical surveillance and monitoring; serious restrictions on free expression, the press, and the internet, including physical attacks on and criminal prosecution of journalists, lawyers, writers, bloggers, dissidents, petitioners, and others as well as their family members, and censorship and site blocking; … severe restrictions and suppression of religious freedom; substantial restrictions on freedom of movement; … forced sterilization and coerced abortions; forced labor and trafficking in persons.”
That these games are allowed to go on by the world is a bigger travesty than the reaction to the 1936 games in Berlin, when Hitler and Nazi Germany were actually celebrated by the world. Then, Hitler’s plans were so mind-boggling in the scope of their barbarity and cruelty that no one could quite believe human beings were capable of it.
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There’s no excuse today. The PRC’s cruel and unjust detention and systematic annihilation of the Uyghur culture and people are widely known. And yet, smiling athletes will mount the podium, smiling Chinese Communists will beam their happiness at the world’s acceptance of their terror regime, and smiling American television reporters will say that things aren’t that bad in China — if you’re not a Uyghur.
Just like they did in 1936.
The Olympic Charter emphasises “promoting respect for universal fundamental ethical principles” and the “preservation of human dignity.” Holding these Games in China is inconsistent with these values, especially as many main sponsors, are directly complicit in the genocide through use of Uyghur slave labour or their promotion of surveillance systems used to arrest and intern Uyghurs. Even official Beijing 2022 merchandise is tainted, so deeply entrenched is Uyghur forced labour in Chinese manufacturing.
History is repeating itself. Today, the International Olympic Committee and global corporations are equally reluctant to criticise the 2022 host nation and withdraw their sponsorship, while the Chinese government sees this as an opportunity to project soft power to the world. We must not ignore the fact that these games are taking place in a country where there is growing evidence of a genocide against Uyghurs and other ethnic groups. We must not allow the Chinese government to use these games to whitewash its attempt to destroy a people. The Beijing 2022Olympics stakeholders must uphold human rights standards, otherwise these Olympics will for ever be known as the ‘Genocide Games’.
It’s like a bad dream from which there is no awakening. And make no mistake: this is not a Communist sin alone. The capitalists are prostituting their souls for a piece of the Olympic pie and the right to place the five multi-colored, connected rings that symbolize the Olympics on their products.
Hitler must be laughing at us from hell.
The athletes have been warned to make no political statements in victory or defeat or suffer the consequences. And in Communist China, they could be anything. But will there be no voices raised in defense of the helpless? If the Palestinians were the issue, half the world would have stayed away. Is there no woke teenager or young adult who gladly speaks against the United States and its bathroom policies who would also condemn China for its genocide?
China is making one long, uninterrupted political statement for two weeks as they show off their nation with the help of the capitalists who have gladly bought the rope to hang themselves. Gushing TV reporters will inform us about the technological miracles wrought by Chinese industry. We’ll be told how friendly the Chinese are, how happy and content they seem.
It will be just like Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia, considered one of the greatest propaganda films of all time. But for every smiling Chinese face we see, perhaps it would also be good to see the face of a Uyghur in forced detention or being worked to death as a slave laborer. That’s not a picture the Chinese want us to see, but it needs to be seen if we’re to endure the Genocide Games dominating the news for the next fortnight.
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